And something the ethics professors including some here who would criticize him for undermining the Kraft's integrity need to always remember:
"Eight years ago,
someone from New England reached out to Bill Belichick, then an assistant to Bill Parcells with the Jets, and told him he had a better deal waiting for him in Foxboro. They were offering the whole package: big money, better players, complete control, no more large, pear-shaped shadow lurking over every aspect of his life.
Belichick was interested, but he also was under contract. He had promised the Jets he would take the reins from Big Bill, who was moving upstairs in the organization, but then something better came along. It was a lesson Belichick learned from Parcells: Contracts are made to be broken. The man in the mirror is all that matters.
After a long, nasty battle that played out on the front of the New York tabloids, Bob Kraft gave the Jets a first-round pick and the Jets gave Kraft their odd, eccentric, disheveled, dour defensive coordinator. Jets president Steve Guttman called Belichick “someone in turmoil.” He said it like that’s a bad thing.
Eight years later, Tom Brady [stats] calls him “the greatest coach in the history of the NFL.”
Kraft, who paid $175 million for a team now worth more than a billion, has made many smart moves as owner of the Patriots [team stats]. This, we’d have to say, was the smartest. He gave up the draft pick, he took the
PR hit, and he handed his team over to the guy who looked like he lived in a cardboard box under a bridge."
And the rest his critics spanning the globe would do well to ponder this:
Belichick is an NFL lifer, a man who has been coaching in the pros for 33 of his 55 years. He thrives in a dark world where the well-adjusted need not apply, where a player can get paralyzed Sunday and barely disrupt the practice schedule, and where Frank Gore can run for two touchdowns four days after the death of his 46-year-old mother. It is a brutal, bloody, unforgiving game they play, and thanks to Bill Belichick, we now know just how low NFL coaches will go to win a game.
Sometimes they will even videotape an opposing coach.
Say it ain’t so, coach. Our faith in the integrity of the game has been shattered.
"It is worth noting that some of the people who were most outraged at Belichick’s subterfuge - we speak of the New York fans at the Jets-Pats game in the Meadowlands - cheered when their gutsy quarterback hobbled off the field in agony.
And I would add were ambivalent when their HC sent him hobbling back onto that field poised to be a sitting duck in a league where there are no guaranteed contracts... Oh, but a camera. Those classless losers draw the line at a camera.
Did he cross an ethical line? That’s a joke, right? Belichick apologized because he got arrogant and he got caught. He cost his owner a quarter of a million dollars, and he cost his team a first-rounder...He probably feels bad. No way does he feel guilty. He’s been using the video camera for years, and it’s done his Patriots more good than harm.
Just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no conscience in football, at least not in NFL football. The truth is there’s no ethical line. In the NFL, you bow your head and pray for Kevin Everett or for Liz Gore,
or again I would add or Steve Belichick or recently for a couple of HC's your young sons and then you go out and try to hurt someone. And they, in turn, try to hurt you. It is a cold, hard, inhumane way to make a living, and nobody does it better than Belichick.
It is only fitting that in a week the rest of the world was calling for Belichick’s head on a stick, it was revealed the Patriots gave him a contract extension through 2013.
He is an arrogant, cheating, ruthless, rule-breaking maniac, and all of New England is damn lucky to have him."
Re: Callahan article on BB
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