Projo Sports Blog

FOXBORO (AP) - Bill Belichick sat on the sideline, watching the Celtics wrap up their championship - three years after his Patriots won their most recent title.

The contrast couldn't have been more stark.

While the Celtics were celebrated for moving from the bottom of the NBA to the top in one season, Belichick and his Patriots were reviled everywhere but in New England for a near-perfect season.

One problem: The first team to go 16-0 in a regular season was upset in the Super Bowl by the New York Giants, ruining what was expected to be a historic finish.

The other: The effects from Spygate, which started on the opening day of the 2007 season, when a Patriots employee was caught taping New York Jets defensive signals from the sideline, continued well into the offseason. It didn't end until early June after Matt Walsh, the ex-Patriots video employee and would-be whistle blower, disclosed nothing new to commissioner Roger Goodell, and Sen. Arlen Specter, without much support from his Congressional colleagues, decided he wouldn't go any further in his investigation.

As training camp approaches, Belichick's players maintain they never paid attention to the nationwide furor over the taping, which included an unsubstantiated report in the Boston Herald that the Patriots taped the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough before the 2002 Super Bowl, the first of three title games they've won this decade. The Herald eventually printed an apology.

"I could care less about it," guard Stephen Neal says. "It didn't affect me in the least then and it still doesn't."

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 Tags  New England Patriots Spygate

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