Right now, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter, because the only thing that does matter now is the image of the New England Patriots. The sports community now associates the Patriots with cheating. The three Super Bowl championships are, and forever will be, under suspicion. The thought will never go away.
Let Mike Martz, coach of the vanquished Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl, absolve the Patriots all he wants. A year from now, five years from now, 50 years from now, who will know or remember what Mike Martz said? The Patriots have been irrevocably stained. They will be, in the eyes of many, the reverse Black Sox. They will be the team that broke the rules. Their three Super Bowls will be regarded as ill-gotten gain.
And Bill Belichick still hasn't fessed up.
Bob Kraft should be livid.
How could anyone not feel sorry for Bob Kraft? He hired a man he believed to be a superior coach, and his judgment appeared to be vindicated with three Super Bowls in four years. Kraft had presided over a phenomenal transformation, assuming control of the team when it was a distant fourth in the affections of local professional sports fans and seeing it grow to a point where his team was a strong 1-A to the mighty Boston Red Sox.
He had inherited Bill Parcells, and he made a mistake by hiring Pete Carroll, but he hit the lottery by hiring the dour defensive genius, ignoring those who said there was no reason Belichick would be any more successful as a head coach in Foxborough than he'd been in Cleveland, where he had alienated players, media, and the entire constituency.
His was said to be a model organization, where the owner owned, the personnel people found the right players, and the dour defensive genius coached 'em right up to championships, or close to 'em.
And now?
And now he has to live with the reality that he presides over the most despised and reviled franchise in all of contemporary American sport, and all because the coach he trusted has betrayed him.
