Baked Beans: 'VideoGate'- The Sentence and My Thoughts

The Patriots got their punishment from the NFL tonight for secretly videotaping the Jets signal callers during their Week 1 win. The punishment for the Three-Time Super Bowl Champions* is:

-$250,000 fine to the Patriots
-$500,000 fine to Bill Belichick himself
-A forfeit of their 2008 First Round Pick shall the Patriots make it to the playoffs for a fifth consecutive season* and sixth out of seven*
-A forfeit of a Second AND a Third Round Pick shall the Patriots not make the postseason for the first time in six seasons*

To gauge the reaction of the Patriots lemmings I temporarily broke my boycott of Bar Stool Sports to see how they are taking it. As you can see they ain't taking it well

(It now surprises me even less that I stopped hearing from them after writing a tongue-in-cheek Anti-Patriots column in May)

Funny thing is I have to agree. This is kinda bullshit for a practice that may not have even affected games at all especially in a sport as complicated to call from a coaching standpoint as football is.

On the other hand, anything that taints the pristine image of the New England Patriots Dynasty* makes me downright giddy. I've already put four asterisks in this post and I'm looking for context to put more in. Here we go, even with the illegal surveillance the Patriots Dynasty* came to a halt in Mile High in January of 2006.