Who do I feel the absolute worst for? I feel bad for Belichick. Imagine not being able to turn on the t.v. or what his kids friends say to him, or walking down the street. The obscenity of it all is that there's nothing so factual that it definitively makes Belichick a bad person. Quite the opposite. Everyone who knows him personally says he's a great guy. He doesn't want to whore himself out to the media and thus takes the role of the villain. Everyone seems to dismiss such enormous pressure that society can place on you. I don't care how "insulated" you are, you live in this society, you cannot ignore it.
His son plays Lacrosse at Rutgers, and his other son(s) I believe go to Rivers. There's no such thing as "privacy" no matter how closely you guard it. The saddest thing about Belichick is that I honestly believe he's a good person. Everything known about him paints the picture of a man that loves to coach football. He's passionate, dedicated and even principled in all the right ways and yet there's so much hate, so much negative energy directed towards a man who is no criminal, no murderer, no tyrannical despot; but merely a human being who is respected by everyone who knows him personally.
The thing that bothers me most about the power of the media isn't that I'm a Pats fan who's deliriously defending an evil man that gave me something to gloat about, it's the human aspect. We all live in this world, no matter how prolific or powerful we are. No one is immune from the rejection of those around you. What would you do if you were Bill Belichick? Change who you are? Open up your heart to the media? Let them in? There's no right answer for Belichick. He will be hated no matter what. Michael Vick, Clemens, Bonds, Isaiah Thomas, Mike Tyson etc. all fill a void we have in our lives. They provide us with a character that we can feel good about hating.
Spectator sports are a vicarious enterprise. We pour our emotions into them as if their success is a personal accomplishment and we blame them worse than we would ourselves when they fail. They reflect our seemingly endless capabilities and personify our most vulnerable flaws. Their crimes are real or imaginary, manifested by the media or merely amplified. But we forget that they are humans. Yes, they choose the precarious position of fame that comes with the occupation they've earned, but that doesn't mean they aren't susceptible to the outcome.
I truly feel worse for Belichick than anyone else in this whole tragic drama. Junior Seau has a mighty disappointment that comes only through pouring your heart into a futile endeavor. But his pain is pure. It's natural. Belichick's pain is both magnificent and unnatural. It's never ending and ever-present. Television, movies, the internet and other agents of such a distortion of reality allow us to divorce ourselves from the characters that exist in a realm we see as imaginary. But they are real. And their existence in this domain doesn't change the fact that they are human; in every way we are.
The sympathy I feel for Bill Belichick is truly unlike anything I have ever felt before for such a public figure. Sure, there's a sports fans' bias. There's always a personal bias. But I honestly cannot say that I've ever felt so badly for an iconic figure. I've felt for a lot of public figures in my short time as a sports fan, but none have affected me as much as Bill Belichick. I truly feel sorry for him.
