by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

I’m not going to claim to be a real basketball fan, so I’ll try to temper the yahoo-ism a bit here, as being ‘that guy’ seems awfully unbecoming.

But God almighty were the Celtics great in their run to the team’s 17th world championship.

Let’s just say that as a result of some unsavory stuff awhile back, involving the team and the sport that we happen to most closely follow, the wife and I are trying to reconnect with what is to be a ’sports fan’ - namely, watching games and enjoying them, cynics and critics and clowns be damned. Yelling for a great play, or a shrewd coaching move, and ignoring the shit-stirring bystander dying to be noticed. We want to dwell inside the white lines, not the story lines.

So with it being playoff basketball and everything, we found ourselves watching as each series progressed, and while the intricacies of the game were lost on us, we certainly recognized familiar sights; like the menacing defense that chokes the air from even the most formidable scorers. The clutch offense that sometimes puts its biggest points on the board only through the sheer force of the individual and collective will of its players. The coaching staff with the hearts and minds of their team on a string.

Anyway, it was all terrific and I can’t help but reflect on the core group of fans that never left the team, even when good fortune did. I’ve come across a few in my Internet travels, and I’m thinking of all the times they noodled the ever-loving hell out of a meager Celtics roster that couldn’t win half its games. Today they have the champ - and a repeat - to discuss. That’s sports justice.

What’s even greater is that for a long time, more than twenty years, the once proud Celtics have largely played third fiddle to the more recently accomplished, and trendy, Red Sox and Pats. People almost forgot that it was the Celtics who first treated Boston to the unique thrill of repeated ultimate victory, and for that reason alone I’m glad they’re the toast of the town again today.

By that same token, of the six NFL, MLB and NBA championships won by local teams this decade, only one has been secured in Boston, and it was done by the Celtics this past Tuesday night. There’s something fitting about that too.

Best of all, the whole thing was about the games on the court. Yeah, I know David Stern and the officials took over there for a minute, as did the unkempt sensitivities of Kobe Bryant and his fellow Lakers, but for the most part, it was about Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, and the seemingly endless parade of role players who each brought fits of brilliance at the most opportune times. It was about a team doing all the big and all the little things, just like it’s supposed to be done, all the while bearing every bit the confidence and determination and execution a champion’s carriage requires.

Honestly, in light of recent events, and despite the abundance of riches bestowed upon us, it’s hard for we gridiron-oriented folks not to be a little bit envious of the Celtics and their fans this week. After all, for one brief shining moment……Camelot. Those moments are indeed rare, despite all recent evidence to the contrary.

Still, for all of us who love sports, and love Boston, and love everything those two things have come to represent in our lives, that envy dissipates quickly, replaced by an admiration and appreciation for a job well done.

by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

The Boston Globe is reporting in its Wednesday editions that Patriots starting right offensive tackle Nick Kaczur has turned federal informant in a drug sting after being arrested with the prescription painkiller Oxycontin in late April.

Globe reporters John R. Ellement and Shelley Murphy have the sorry details.

Kaczur, in the best season of his three year career, started 15 games for the AFC champs last fall. According to the Globe, he has since told investigators that he began purchasing the pills in November, as the Patriots moved towards the playoffs and their now infamous Super Bowl loss.

Earlier this week, the Patriots signed right tackle Oliver Ross, veteran of 53 NFL starts, to a free agent deal. It would be hard to believe that signing is unrelated to this morning’s news.  

Kaczur is the third Patriots player to run afoul of the law for drug possession since the New York Giants upset the undefeated Pats in early February. Safety Willie Andrews and veteran runner Kevin Faulk were detained for marijuana possession before the end of that month, though Faulk denied the pot was his and later passed a drug test that helped him avoid the NFL’s substance abuse program. Lest we forget, the season began with the suspension of veteran Rodney Harrison after he was collared for purchasing performance enhancing drugs by mail.

Ignoring an ESPN-fueled, made-for-television cluster-controversy may well be adviseable, even necessary, for Patriots fans, but denying or diminishing these events are not. Surely these players are human beings as well, subject to the same foibles as us all. Surely each one must be viewed as an individual first, accountable for their own actions.

But for the third time in four months, the New England Patriots have had a player arrested for drugs.

We can’t ignore that.

by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

I admit, they almost had me.

I had gone more than three months without writing about You Know What-Gate, choosing instead to amuse myself with talk of the free agent and draft markets, and the question of how in the world the Patriots will be able to come back from blowing a perfect season in the last two minutes of the Super Bowl.

Until this week.

It started (relatively) innocently enough on Tuesday, when former video assistant Matt Walsh finally appeared at the NFL offices to tell the league what he knows about Bill Belichick’s taping practices. As editor of PD (I won a coin flip), I felt we had little choice but to acknowledge the much anticipated event.

So I did, and I’m now here to tell you that I should have left it at that.

I didn’t. One Spygate post led to another to another this week, and before I knew it, I was at full boil. It was as if it was September 10, 2007 all over again.

Just as the Vast Wing Nut Conspiracy had hoped.

Football coaches trying to steal signals from other football coaches isn’t nearly the threat to our sporting lives as is the corrosive element that duplicitously claims to be our advocate. When the objective history of this entire ridiculous episode is finally, mercifully written, it will reveal that the so-called advocates cynically arrived first at their desired conclusion and then worked backwards, not for the public’s good, but for their own.

Now they feign weariness of the whole subject while stoking the flames for further punishment. Further clicks, further eyeballs, further sales, further profits. Until further notice.

Now they presume to define for us what Bill Belichick did to us. Us! We’re victims! He put us on the defensive FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!

Putting aside the overwrought drama for a minute: on the defensive against what? Well, what sportswriters think, for one.

Isn’t it interesting how this accomplishes the dual purpose of keeping them front and center at a time when consumers are finding fewer and fewer reasons to look their way?

If Spygate dies, a little part of them - their wallet, specifically - dies too.

I can hear it now - “oh, sure, it’s all the media’s fault!”

That seems like a mighty convenient way of excusing them from any responsibility whatsoever.

I can’t do that. Because this week reminded me that only one party in this sordid affair stands to benefit from its extension, and they’ll do anything, say anything, go anywhere to make it so.

They’ll keep their corrupt carousel grinding, hoping you’ll feel compelled to ride, as they lurk within the trojan horses they’ve sent spinning round and round, contemptuously leveraging the public’s notion of a Fourth Estate to mask the reality of their craven entitlements.

So this is where Patriots Daily gets off.

None of us came to this game and this team because of a reporter or a columnist. My mother and father brought me, and I bet yours did too. Or your brother or sister or uncle or cousin. Or your friends. They brought you, not to listen to self-serving pontification but to watch football, a gloriously interesting game, especially with repeated viewing. They brought you not to assume a faux dispassionate arms length pose to conceal selfish resentments, but for you to make the same emotional connection they had made, with a team that by its very geography had come to represent something in all of them.

Along the way, you may have discovered that the reporter and columnist could be a helpful guide as you learned more about this experience. And it is indeed affirming to know that a precious few still exist, and they continue to provide that service for a fair and honorable price. Good morning, Mike Reiss, Shalise Manza Young, Karen Guregian, Doug Flynn, Eric McHugh, Chris Price, and you others who still value honesty and integrity in your work, and who by your actions humbly acknowledge and respect the responsibilities your public positions still bear.

As to your less-admirable colleagues, the miserable squirrels who number their co-workers reputations in the mounting body count brought about by their avaricious scramble for every last remaining nut, two words.

Be gone.

At least here, on these pages. And hopefully, in your homes, your cars, your pc’s. Give their words and their deeds the weight they deserve, which is to say none. Show them every bit as much respect as they’re showing you. Which is to say none.
 
To do otherwise would be to invite further abuse. There’s only one way to end Spygate.

By not taking their bait.   

So I’ll try to do that here, by turning my attention permanently away from the sideshow and back towards the real show. In fairness, I’ve had the floor plenty over the last week, and if one of our writers finds they have a parting shot at this cruel carnival, it’s only right that I give them their chance.

But once that’s over, we’re moving on. On to what brought us here in the first place. Professional football, and our local team.

I’m having this conversation with you now to make sure that you hold me, and all the rest of us, accountable for doing just that.

by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

Once again a bottom-feeding sports desk has played hide the sausage with an incendiary hatchet job on Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

An alert reader (thanks Steve) tipped us to this ESPN Page Two five-star nutty by Gregg Easterbook, which calls for Belichick’s suspension for life from the NFL.

Easterbrook, a first-class weirdo who is apparently under the mistaken belief that Belichick is Jewish, has spent the better part of the last nine months comparing a football coach to the Devil. Now, just as his pet conspiracy theories evaporate one by one around his pointy little head, he decides to crank up the rhetoric.

Thing is, the story has disappeared. Go ahead. See if you can find it. The NFL page? Don’t see it. Page Two? Nope, not there either.

Imagine what kind of sick f**k you’d have to be to write a column that even ESPN can’t stand behind?

Don’t worry, Gregg. We saved a copy.

EDIT (8:08 pm) - It appears ESPN doesn’t have any trouble standing behind the column after all. Now the column being touted on Fearless Leader’s main page, with the plea for Commissioner Roger Goodell to “publish the guilty party” and bring Spygate to a close.

Funny that the free lunch gang is so quick to write off a half-million dollar fine when it’s coming out of somebody’s else wallet.

So, if I understand this correctly, unless Goodell suspends Belichick, preferrably for life, then Gregg Easterbrook and ESPN will see to it that Spygate never ends.

I think there’s a word for that.

It’s ain’t journalism.

by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

“…it’s embarrassing, it’s absurd…”

Yeah, it’s that, all right. Bill Belichick was talking about Matt Walsh, but he could just as well have been tying a bow on this whole episode.

Because it has been nothing but absurdity since last September, and now we have the tight-lipped coaching legend making a surprise appearance on CBS News with Katie Couric last night.

Honestly, I can’t get into a line-by-line on his interview with Armen Keteyian. I’m parsed out, thanks. The details are in the link above (an extended version), and in Mike Reiss’s story this morning. 

Other than a short clip of Walsh filming a game against Cleveland, I didn’t see or hear anything I didn’t expect. Belichick - certainly with the team’s support - was clearly there to counter Walsh’s assertion to HBO Sports and the New York Times that the coach knew he was breaking a rule and has lied about it since, and he has lied about the extent of his interaction with Walsh.

Belichick fired back, going out of his way to paint Walsh as a puffed up, resume-fudging creep. Like any good TV interviewee, he brought a clip, evidently a director’s cut of the Cleveland tape Walsh produced in New York on Tuesday. This version focuses not on Butch Davis’s staff but on the former “third video assistant” behind his tripod, near two or three other guys doing the same thing, in broad daylight, in full view of every person in the stadium.

The clip will now be dissected and refuted and defended like everything else has been, and Belichick will no doubt be called a pathological liar by sunset tonight, if it hasn’t happened already.  He’ll no doubt be slammed for going back at Walsh, and incredibly, someone will accuse him of “dragging out the story”. That should be enough to cause me to have a stroke. Yet on and on it will go, as the calliope drones.

Look. Have we forgotten that ESPN felt liberated enough to paintshop this guy as the Devil Himself not too long ago? That ever happen to you? Ever been attacked from every corner of the 24 hour news cycle nine months running? Ever had so many people so anxious to believe the worst about you that they would accept unchallenged every word of anonymous assistant golf pro and wagon-hitching hanger-on?

Then I don’t think you can say the guy’s out of line in taking his three minutes to respond to the career embellishments of a corner-cutting, finger-pointing nobody. Enough’s enough.

by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

By now you’ve read John Tomase’s explanation as to how he and the Boston Herald came to accuse the Patriots of cheating to win Super Bowl 36.

To me, it sounds like reckless personal ambition trumped sound judgement and professional responsibility.  Because we now know the whole thing was predicated on the whispers of anonymous people who had no business claiming they knew anything. And a reporter who callously ignored that fundamental truth in the blind, self serving pursuit of being ‘first’.

Which is not the same thing as being ‘best’. You can never be the best when you truly comprehend the power of your words only after they’ve come raining back down on your own head.

For John Tomase, the long road back begins with a vertical climb. On ice.

For his belly-crawling bosses, well, they get to come back to work this morning secure in the knowledge they have a fall guy in place to cover for their own culpability.

The better for them to strike again, as soon as the heat’s off, and as soon as they find their next ’story’ to root for, their next ’subject’ to malign, their next voracious reporter oblivious to the concept of a public trust.

The next time they can distract you into debating whether you can trust one of their reporters instead of whether or not you can trust them, those who have the true power of the press.

Ownership of one.

Caveat emptor.