I don't like the New England Patriots as coached by Bill Belichick.  I didn't think about them much until Spygate, when it was revealed that Belichick was in the habit of videotaping the hand signals of his opponents' coaching staffs, an NFL rule breaker for which he was fined 500,000 dollars. 
     By then, the Patriots had won three Super Bowls with the Belichick-Tom Brady as quarterback combination.  Although they've played in two more Super Bowls (both against the New York Giants), they haven't won since before Spygate.  After Spygate they had the remarkable undefeated season which resulted in their first loss to the Giants.  One of my vivid memories of that game is the conclusion, when Belichick jogged out on the field to shake Giants head coach Tom Coughlin's hand.  The game actually required one more play with the Giants in possession of the ball, and a second or two remaining on the clock.  The officials herded players and team employees off the field so the game could be completed, but a shot showed Bill Belichick stomping off the field to the locker room before the game ended.  Up till then I had never seen a coach or a player leave the field before the end of a game.  It confirmed something I already knew about Belichick: he's not a gentleman, he lacks grace, he's a degenerate in a culture that values successful sociopaths. 
     The degree to which the New England Patriots were defended by sports media after Spygate, worshipped as "the greatest football team of all time" during their undefeated season (undefeated until the underdog Giants beat them), was enough to roil my intellectual vomit at the time.  Since Super Bowl 42, when Belichick couldn't handle staying on the field until the game ended, the Patriots have been strong contenders in the NFL, losing again to the Giants in another Super Bowl, but nevertheless receiving that arrogant title, "America's Team," formerly bestowed unthinkingly on the Dallas Cowboys.  The title, I guess, urges us to regard a team led by a cheating head coach as the team to root for, just like we were supposed to root for the invasion of Afghanistan. 
     My grumpiness aside, the Patriots are at it again.  On Sunday, January 18, 2015, the Indianapolis Colts faced the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, the winner to travel to Arizona to meet the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 49.  The Patriots, playing at home, beat the Colts 45-7.  Granted, the Colts had a hard few hours to deal with, but NFL officialdom has concluded the Patriots used underinflated balls eleven out of twelve times.  Underinflation in cold weather makes the ball easier to grip, or so I understand, giving the quarterback, Tom Brady in this case, a better grip on the thing than otherwise.  Would the Colts have won or scored far more points if the Patriots hadn't (once again in the Belichick era) cheated?  Unknowable.  What is known are NFL rules.  Underinflating balls, knowingly giving your quarterback an advantage the other team doesn't have, is a violation. 
     What follows the Patriots around are excuses in sports media for their behavior.  Some say that the Colts played so badly that the pliability of Tom Brady's balls doesn't matter.  Another comment I heard on ESPN suggested that the Patriots could've been using ping pong balls and they still would've destroyed the Colts.  Some people on television and radio get paid appreciable salaries, and they make such irrelevant statements, the kind that would get them fired if I ran their organization. 
     I admit the Patriots give me spiritual heartburn.  I ingest their activities and those activities back up again. 
     The penalties for "Deflategate," as it's actually being called, could involve fines and taking away a draft pick or two for the coming season.  Belichick's half a million dollar fine after Spygate was made irrelevant when Patriots owner Robert Kraft raised his salary the following season.  This is just another way of saying, Rich fuckers don't get punished.  Instead, Belichick went on to more winning seasons, winning and losing playoff games, always a serious competitor in the League, but not winning more Super Bowls.
     I think Belichick's motive, if he knew about it or decided to do it, for deflating footballs points to his win-at-any-cost character flaw.  The irony of a three-time Super Bowl winning head coach resorting to taping his opponents to gain what could only have been occasional advantage over them, and later resorting to using rule-breaking balls in a Championship Game, can be explained, perhaps, by a driving need to win more Super Bowls after a decade-long dry spell.  Superstar quarterback Tom Brady has just so many years left, but he is a very great quarterback, which makes me wonder: why does such a phenomenal athlete with a genius football mind  need the help rules-violating trickery provides?  The New England Patriots going to Super Bowl 49 have proven themselves an excellent team this season.  Why cheat?  Is it like asking why a well-off person steals a purse from a store?  Because she's a kleptomaniac?  Is Bill Belichick, with his already well-earned three Super Bowl rings, a pathological abuser of NFL regulations, knowing he can get away with it in a time when Commissioner Roger Goodell has demonstrated, with the Ray Rice domestic abuse case, his own spineless degeneracy?
     Whatever happens with all of it, I'm rooting with all my heart for the Seattle Seahawks on Super Bowl Sunday.

                                                                             Vic Neptune