RE:
THIS ******
Why does everyone CONTINUE to call anything done before 2006 cheating. After that time, where there was clarifying memo (which I personally feel overreached), one could certainly argue that taping beyond that point was sufficient for serious rebuke (I still refuse to call this "cheating").
Before Sept. 2006............. There is no way you can call this cheating. There was an ambiguously worded rule in the Constitution and by-laws that BB
REASONABLY interpreted to mean that so long as its not used "in game", you could continue the practice. The NFL obviously agreed too since they choose to circulate a "clarifying memo" (which generally mean something isn't clear to begin with) instead of hitting the Pats up with an infraction then and there. Other teams faced league discipline that year, so if the NFL thought NE was cheating had, they would have went after him instead of sent a memo to every team.
After the first memo, it gets a little grayer, and harder to defend (but I still do). Still, you can clearly see how reasonable people would say after getting that memo. If you didn't clarify, you deserved what you got.
Before it though. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to say that BB was cheating. He was interpreting a rule that was NOT clearly specific enough to produce uniformity. THAT goes back to the league. It is their responsibility to word rules so that there is no opportunity for mis-reading them and if they don't, they are for sure the most guilty. It's hardly BB's fault that the league put out a ambiguous and terribly worded rule that was open to misinterpretation.
Hence, if you feel you have to invalidate the 06-07 seasons, go ahead. Before that I don't really see any wrongdoing, and anything that spout from that pre-1996 tree is pure BS (such as the commenters position).
