if it wasn't gonna give us a competitive advantage at some point, then why was BB risking a penalty by doing it? he would have to be an idiot to risk a penalty for NO potential gain.
either he's an idiot, or it was going to give us some advantage at some point.
I'm going with competitive advantage, you can go with idiot. your choice.
It was a matter of convenience from the sidelines instead of the press box where it is legal, and in a culture of "everyone does it" that can blur the morality lines that the media has since clearly drawn.
The best analogy I can think of is downloading MP3s. I don't know how old you are but I'm 24 and in High School literally everyone I knew downloading songs illegally. Was it wrong/stealing? technically yes, but no one was taking a moral stand until it became a huge controversy. All of a sudden the RIAA started going after individuals, suing the mother of some 12 year old $125k or something like that to make an example of her and scare other people. It worked, and while illegal downloads are still around, they have been marginalized by the fear that what happened to people that were made an example of could happen to you. It's the same story with BB.
If you read
The Education of a Coach you'll see that BB is obsessed with breaking down film, and would pursue scouting and breaking down film to an extent that the vast majority of other coaches would find useless. Since you can tape defensive signals legally from the press box, and can visibly observe them on the field, I honestly believe that he felt the spirit of the rule was to prevent use of the tapes in-game, which many feel is impossible anyway, and that if it was against the rules, it wasn't such an enormous violation as the press has made it out to be because no one really cared anyway until Mangini used it to screw him. Then the media went crazy with it and those that had been beaten badly by the Pats in the past or felt slighted by them piled on, as did the fans who are proned to use anything against a team they hate. Goodell was forced to go overboard with the punishment because the media was driving the story so hard and whipping all the fans into a frenzy.
This is what I honestly believe happened here. If I was a fan of another team would I believe this? probably not, because a) I would have no reason to believe it and b) The idea of the team that has kicked our asses every year being cheaters is too juicy to let go of.
I strongly suggest that everyone read
The Education of a Coach as it gives great insight into BB as an former college athlete who had a problem with an assistant coach in college teaching the chop block and a coach who has been wary and standoffish with the media since Tennessee media politics forced his father's ouster as an assistant at Vanderbilt despite their success on the field. The gulf between the image the media has painted of BB and the portrait this book creates is so great that it truly scares me just how powerful the media is in shaping public opinion.
