The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [118]
Granted, the winning drive was made a bit easier by the dramatic shift in momentum caused by Coleman’s reversal.
“It was like a vacuum that just sucked the life out of all of us,” Raiders Pro Bowl tackle Lincoln Kennedy told NFL Films. “From that point on, we just weren’t the same team. We no longer had that swagger. We no longer believed we were the better team. I knew after that [call] that we were not going to win this game.”
But even so, the Patriots still had to win two more games before they’d be crowned champions. One bad call in the divisional round does not a champion make, and Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field, where the Pats had to play the following week, is one of the toughest places to win in all of sports. Add to that the knowledge that St. Louis, their opponent in the Super Bowl, was a fourteenpoint favorite and had won the title just two years before. All those things considered, the likelihood of a fix seem miniscule.
But sticking it to Al Davis may not have been the only reason, ridiculous or otherwise, that the league may have wanted the Patriots to advance in the 2001 playoffs and beyond. One theory, which spread like wildfire across the Internet in the weeks after the Super Bowl, but failed to gain traction from mainstream news sources (with good reason), was that the Bush administration, in the immediate wake of the tragedies of September 11, 2001, conspired with NFL executives to use the New England Patriots as a propagandistic symbol in a covert attempt to foster passionate support of “patriotic” ideals. Some, including creative posters to the forums at abovetopsecret.com—a popular conspiracy website—went as far as to suggest that the government wanted the Patriots in the first Super Bowl after 9/11 because their presence would help generate public support for the impending war in Iraq and toleration of forthcoming egregious abuses of personal freedoms under the Patriot Act.
I know, I know. It’s a ludicrous theory. Depending on your sensibilities, it might even be an offensive one. I will not argue that point. But before you dismiss it completely, or start calling me names or egg my house, consider the league’s (and the government’s) reaction to the revelations made public in 2007 that Bill Belichick’s staff had been illegally videotaping its opponents for years.
#29: SPYGATE
On September 9, 2007, the first truly credible and damning evidence of a Patriot conspiracy was brought to light when an NFL security official, tipped off by New York Jets security, confiscated a video camera and videotape from Matt Estrella, a Patriots video assistant who had been caught illegally taping the signals of Jets defensive coaches during the season opener at Giants Stadium. This incident and the resulting controversy have since come to be known, rather infamously, as “Spygate.”
A former assistant under Belichick from 2000-2005, then Jets Head Coach Eric Mangini possessed an insider’s knowledge of the Patriots’ covert surveillance tactics and, according to reports, shared what he knew with members of the Jets’ organization when first arriving in New York in 2006. It took the Jets a while to catch the rival Patriots in the act, but once they did, the Patriots were exposed as cheats. The story that unfolded afterward cast serious doubt not only on Belichick’s integrity and the origin of the Patriots’ success dating back to their first championship season, but also on the NFL′s knowledge of (and possible role in covering up) their deceit.
According to a report by Jets beat reporter Rich Cimini in the New York Daily News, Estrella was caught videotaping hand signals from the Jets’ defensive coaches on the sideline. Stopped by stadium security as he tried to enter the visitors’ locker room shortly before halftime, a