I do have to say, that as a fan of sports, journalism, and writing in general, this entire episode has convinced me that sports writers are not very smart. They're sanctimonious, over-sensitive, and don't generally report anything other than opinion. There was a huge opportunity in all this for someone to do some serious investigative journalism and write a good piece, and everybody dropped the ball, across the board. They all seemed quite content to write opinionated columns, but not one of them did a serious expose on how prevelant this is in the league, what it really means in a game, and what the politics around the episode was. Whether that piece was ultimately critical of Belichick or not, it's embarassing that this kind of junk is the best that the sports world can muster. Truly.
For a columnist like Mariotti to suggest that "offensive" signals were taped is either A) unethical and disingenous, or B) supremely lazy and uninformed. Either way, it's yellow journalism. It's a little sad that there aren't better writers following the NFL.