To rehash all this....
This
ESPN article from Sep 13, 2007 says, "The "Game Operations Manual" states that "no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game." The manual states that "all video shooting locations must be enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead." NFL security officials confiscated a camera and videotape from a New England video assistant on the Patriots' sideline when it was suspected he was recording the Jets' defensive signals.
Taping any signals is prohibited."
Here's the rule the Patriots broke in Spygate, which is found in the Game Operations Manual (referenced in that ESPN article):
"No video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game. All video shooting locations must be enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead. Any use by any club at any time, from the start to the finish of any game in which such club is a participant, of any communications or information-gathering equipment, other than Polaroid-type cameras or field telephones, shall be prohibited, including without limitation videotape machines, telephone tapping, or bugging devices, or any other form of electronic devices that might aid a team during the playing of a game."
How did the article's conclusion in bold ("taping any signals is prohibited") arrive out of the actual rule above? The rule says nothing about taping the other team's sidelines or signals.
In this
NY Daily News article from Dec 13, 2007, we see that Goodell sent out another memo on this topic. "One GM told the Daily News yesterday that a letter, signed by Ray Anderson, the league’s executive vice president of football operations, was received Thursday to reiterate the league’s policy on the use of video equipment on game day.
“Please be reminded yet again that a coaching aide, such as a computer or electronic equipment of any kind, other than monitors supplied by the league, are prohibited,” the memo said.
It went on to stress that “any use by any club at any time from the start to the finish of any game in which such club is a participant of any communication or information-gathering equipment other than a Polaroid type camera or field phone, shall be prohibited,” which includes, but is not limited to, “videotape machines, telephone tapping, bugging devices or any other form of electronic devices that might aid a team during the playing of the game.”"
Again, we see the rules about what kind of equipment can be used, but not a word about whether opponents' signals can be photographed. Because teams ARE allowed to use still photos - old school paper printouts were examined all the time by teams. Now it's done by tablet. See this photo.
View attachment 78598
So it's always been ok to use photography to look at the game on the sidelines. Always. So:
(1) Can a team use an NFL-approved device (a polaroid type camera or a digital camera or a video camera IN APPROVED LOCATIONS) to record the game and use that information during a game? Yes, 100%.
(2) Can a team use a non-NFL approved device to record the game and use that information during a game? No.
(3) Can a team use a non-NFL approved LOCATION to record the game and use that information during a game? No.
Now...
(4) Can a team watch the opponent's signals, write them down, and use that information during a game? Yes.
(5) Can a team videotape the opponent's signals? Wellllllllll.....mostly no. But here it gets fuzzy. The rule above says nothing about the opponent's signals. But the memo that Goodell sent out in 2006 said this: "Videotaping of any type, including but not limited to taping off an opponent’s offensive or defensive signals,
is prohibited on the sidelines."
So it makes it look like the issue is with taping the opponent's signals. However, kind of like with the second amendment, there's a clause that makes the issue gray. The second amendment, of course, says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...." Is that just stating a fact or is that establishing the condition upon which we have the right to bear arms? No, we're not getting into that topic here. It's just that in a similar way (lawyers here will probably say it's not similar at all, and who am I to argue?), this little clause in the memo in bold is a problem. That can easily be read that the issue is not taping signals. It's where you tape them from. What's being prohibited is taping them from the sideline.
But let's combine the operations manual and this memo. It sure looks like what you cannot do from the letter of the law, so to speak, is use video in a non-NFL approved location, or to video signals *from the sideline*. There is nothing in there about whether you can use still photography to record opponents' signals. There is nothing in there about whether you can use video cameras to record opponents' signals as long as that video is taken from an approved location. And there's nothing at all that says you can't use your still camera (polaroid or digital) to take photos of the other team's signals and use that in the same game. Literally nothing at all in either the rule or in Goodell's memo.
This is interesting, from this
NY Times article in 2008,
"The issue is not stealing signals. That is allowed, “and it is done quite widely,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said recently.
The issue, rather, is the method of acquiring the signals.
“I’m not sure that there is a coach in the league that doesn’t expect that their signals are being intercepted by opposing teams,” Goodell said Feb. 1, two days before the Super Bowl.
Hardly a revelation, it is nonetheless striking to hear the leader of the top sports league in the country combat questions about cheating with reminders that signal stealing is part of a time-honored tradition.
The message is a murky one, ethicists said. Further advances in technology, combined with the game’s winking culture toward espionage, promise to confuse matters.
“Is it a gray area? Yes,” Sharon Stoll, the director for a center on sports ethics at the University of Idaho, said in a telephone interview. “And they have a problem. We enjoy the nature of competition and gamesmanship. And we enjoy placing those skills against each other. But how far are those skills to go?”
Should they include the ability to steal signals, either by “permissible observation,” as the N.F.L. put it, or by electronically recording them?
Goodell suggested that the responsibility was on teams to conceal their messages, not on the ones trying to steal them. Unless, of course, would-be thieves have the gall to break out the video equipment.
It is why, as Goodell pointed out, coaches cover their mouths when barking instructions. It is why teams use complicated hand signals and often have someone send fake signals to confuse opponents. It is why the N.F.L., at the recent Super Bowl, surrounded the practice facilities of the Patriots and the Giants with police officers, security guards, even F.B.I agents. It is all to keep prying eyes away.
During a news conference two days before the Super Bowl, Goodell said that any coach who did not expect signals to be stolen was “stupid” (a word he attributed to a coach). When asked whether a specific game might have been tainted by taping, he said no, in part, because the would-be victim, Philadelphia’s Andy Reid, “is a very smart coach.”
It is an interesting perspective, where the people who try to steal information and those who protect themselves from such theft are deemed to be playing the game the right way.
Already, games are broadcast through a dozen or more cameras for television. Teams also record games with their own equipment and spend hours analyzing the tendencies of their next opponent. The mission is to decode intentions. It is reasonable to wonder exactly where legitimate research ends and illicit activity begins."
- - -
So Goodell is on record saying that it's not wrong to steal signals, and that a team that doesn't expect the other team to try to steal their signals to be *stupid*. You're allowed to do all kinds of things to steal signals, and there's nothing immoral or illegal about it. There is, however, a very narrow band of activities that are not permissible, and while the Patriots technically broke the rule - 100% they did - the idea that it was some moral monstrosity was, and forever will be, an absolutely massive overreaction.
Yourteamcheats has it right when it says,
"Spygate was:
- 10% about where they were filming from
- 90% about Belichick stupidly thumbing his nose at Goodell's new rule, and
- 0% about what was being filmed
It should have been called
WrongLocationgate or
F*ckYouRogergate, because there was absolutely no element of spying involved."
And...
"Spygate was a chest-thumping pissing match between Belichick and Goodell that Goodell was able to "win" by imposing an outsized fine as he fell back on his fainting couch crying "fair play" and "honest competition.""
