I could be wrong, but I'd like to believe that if either of the Patriots "scandals" occurred in the mid-90s or earlier, we'd still hear the some the same outrage we heard in 2007 and 2015. I think, though, there would be some elements in the local and nation media that would have pushed back and shamed the accusers for making excuses: "You never changed your signals and now you're crying because someone figured them out? That's on you." "Grigson, Pagano and Luck lost by 38 points and they want to blame deflated footballs? They should take up a sport more their speed, like knitting."
Someone would have pointed out how what a terrible example it was to hear the leadership from the Eagles and Panthers, who had years to raise concerns but never did, decide in 2008 that they had been cheated in the Super Bowl, without any proof at all. "Hear that, kids? If you lose a spelling bee, only get the second highest grade on a math test, come up short in a race in gym class, just follow Marty Hurney and Jeff Lurie's lead and accuse the winner of cheating. It doesn't matter if there's no evidence, the important thing if you have an excuse why you lost, which means you really didn't lose."
None of that happened, of course. It was all a race to see who could be more outraged. Look at the fallout from last year's AFC championship game. One of the main themes was changing the rules and talk of a lack of fairness all because people weren't happy with the outcome.
In the big picture, I understand that people will always get tired of a winner and root for them to fall. I've enjoyed the Yankees, Duke basketball, and Notre Dame football all losing because they were on top for an extended period and I wanted to see someone knock them off. The difference with the Patriots is that the NCAA or MLB never singled Duke or the Yankees out for excessive punishments to try and derail their success. In fact, the NCAA usually does the opposite and tries to minimize an infraction by one of the big name, blue blood schools. Earlier in thread, someone mentioned the Broncos taping a team's walkthrough. No one remembers that incident because the league didn't make a big deal out of it and Denver only received a minimal punishment. Compare that to the Patriots-adjacent film crew in Cleveland. Three months later and it's still being investigated. If that was the Jaguars, it never would have made the news.
I've mentioned it before, but I'll never understand why the NFL seemingly wants the narrative out there that the most successful run in the history of their sport was due to cheating. Maybe they look at the league's success and their revenue growth and think that negative attention is attention and it's all good. I wonder if they've considered that they could have enjoyed the same success or more if they didn't play up or, in the case of deflategate, invent these controversies.
