Heres my take on the Jags, spygate, and the asterisk:
1) The Jacksonville Jaguars are a rough and tumble team, they are a throwback to tradditional football. They pound the ball, and their defense plays very aggresively. Some say that they are dirty, but look at the game as a whole, its a contact sport that is commonly compared to battle, its a very thin line players have to walk, and being a fan of a team that employees Rodney Harrison, Brandon Merriweather, and Vince Wilfork, I completely understand their philosophy. If Garrard runs and dosnt slide feet first, I hope Ty Warren spears him too, I'll take the penelity, the NFL fine, and the perception of our team as dirty, but most of all I'll take that WIN, because without a teams #1 QB, in most cases, that game is a done deal, and if that QB is stupid enough to slide head first, its his own fault.
I think, from what Ive been reading, Jacksonville's official website, their trolling fans, and senior editor, that they are not only naive, but very careless. Allow me to explain:
2) Spygate
When you play poker, you are allowed to look at the opposing player, and try to "decode" facial expressions, thats why pro's wear dark glasses, visors, hats, hoodies, and so forth, to disguise any sort of "tells", but it is completely within the rules to try and read "signals".
In the NFL it is completely within the rules to study anything, and everything the opposing team should bring out to the field and show during a game, including, but not limited to defensive hand signals, and not only is it common place for opposing teams to try and decode these signals, but it is so widespread, that EVERY TEAM uses several dummy signal callers, and one real signal caller, as to throw opposing teams off.
Its a matter of semantics really
Its one thing if you secretly videotaped your opposing poker players facial expressions for patterns/tendencies, and another if you secretly videotaped their cards.
If breaking a rule is cheating, in its technical sense, you could go through each team and find that every team in the NFL has cheated, think penelities and flags
But in reality, decoding "tells"/ hand signals is within NFL rules.
Videotaping them is not.
The New England Patriots broke a rule, it would be entirely different if the Patriots were video taping their call sheets, or somehow obtained their playbook.
3) It is common knowledge, regardless what the Patriot players/ coaches say, that this is a team that will use any piece of information as bulletin board material. The team has an underdog mentality, and regardless of perfect seasons, superbowl wins, or lopsided scores, they feel it is "them against the world", and to go ahead, regardless of if it was considered satire or not, and put an asterisk next to their name, when thay have done what few thought ever imaginable, a perfect season, is to fuel the fire.
Absolute stupidity, just look at what the team has done in previous games when less negativity has been said or written about this team.
