Spygate vs Bountygate

Many have tried to compare Spygate and Bountygate. The Patriots taping of their opponents signs is nothing like the Saints targeting their opponents health. The only thing that the two have in common is the attempt to illegally gain an advantage. Most acknowledge that what the Saints did is worse. Good thing. It's far worse. The comparisons are made more to argue that the punishment of the New Orleans Saints is too severe. Especially since Patriots head coach Bill Belichick wasn't suspended. Personally, I never thought that what the Patriots did was all that bad. You can sit on your ass in your living room and steal a team's signs. Even record them. You aren't guaranteed to get all of the signs but during the course of a game you can probably catch a bunch of them. It was just stupid of Belichick and the Patriots to do so. Roger Goodell had recently warned all teams against taping the opponents sidelines. The warning was probably aimed right at Belichick's team. The Patriots ran right through stupid when they taped the New York Jets sideline. The Jets were coached by former Patriots coach Eric Mangini. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly how it was being done. Belichick must have figured that his former student would be too indebted to ever blow that whistle. Mangini doesn't really care too much for stuff like that when he's no longer in the nest. The Patriots weren't just playing with fire. They were burning down their own castle. It can be debated whether the Patriots were really gaining an unfair advantage from these tapes. They must have since they were doing it for a while and a warning wasn't slowing them down. If they should be punished for anything it should be for being really, really stupid. The Saints were criminal. Targeting the health of players is wrong on about every level imaginable. Not only did they carry out this crap for three years, they lied about it for three years. The Saints claimed that no player was carted off the field. I guess that they are trying to say that having no victim means no crime. Well, their shenanigans did injure Brett Favre in the NFC Championship game. He returned to the game but the late hits, illegal hits changed that game. One could go so far as to say that the targeting of Favre got the Saints to the Super Bowl. Sean Payton is lucky that he likely has a job in the NFL after his suspension. The question shouldn't be whether the punishment of the Saints was too severe. It should be whether they were severe enough.