In the N.F.L., It's Not Cheating Until You Start Videotaping ----------------------------------------------------------- February 17, 2008 By John Branch An N.F.L. team could place an army of lip readers on the sideline to try to steal messages from the opposing side. It could fill a row of seats behind the other team's bench with espionage experts to decipher all the sideline cues. It could have scouts in the press box aiming binoculars at every opposing coach, scribbling notes to match with game tape to glean what all the signals mean. All that is allowed, and maybe some of it is done. But videotaping the other sideline? Do not think about it. And therein lies one of the quirky twists to what may already be the biggest cheating scandal in the N.F.L.'s history, a chapter that began when the Patriots were caught taping the Jets' sideline last September. The issue is not stealing signals. That is allowed, "and it is done quite widely," Commissioner Roger Goodell said recently. The issue, rather, is the method of acquiring the signals. "I'm not sure that there is a coach in the league that doesn't expect that their signals are being intercepted by opposing teams," Goodell said Feb. 1, two days before the Super Bowl. Hardly a revelation, it is nonetheless striking to hear the leader of the top sports league in the country combat questions about cheating with reminders that signal stealing is part of a time-honored tradition. The message is a murky one, ethicists said. Further advances in technology, combined with the game's winking culture toward espionage, promise to confuse matters. "Is it a gray area? Yes," Sharon Stoll, the director for a center on sports ethics at the University of Idaho, said in a telephone interview. "And they have a problem. We enjoy the nature of competition and gamesmanship. And we enjoy placing those skills against each other. But how far are those skills to go?" Should they include the ability to steal signals, either by "permissible observation," as the N.F.L. put it, or by electronically recording them? Goodell suggested that the responsibility was on teams to conceal their messages, not on the ones trying to steal them. Unless, of course, would-be thieves have the gall to break out the video equipment. It is why, as Goodell pointed out, coaches cover their mouths when barking instructions. It is why teams use complicated hand signals and often have someone send fake signals to confuse opponents. It is why the N.F.L., at the recent Super Bowl, surrounded the practice facilities of the Patriots and the Giants with police officers, security guards, even F.B.I agents. It is all to keep prying eyes away. During a news conference two days before the Super Bowl, Goodell said that any coach who did not expect signals to be stolen was "stupid" (a word he attributed to a coach). When asked whether a specific game might have been tainted by taping, he said no, in part, because the would-be victim, Philadelphia's Andy Reid, "is a very smart coach." It is an interesting perspective, where the people who try to steal information and those who protect themselves from such theft are deemed to be playing the game the right way. Already, games are broadcast through a dozen or more cameras for television. Teams also record games with their own equipment and spend hours analyzing the tendencies of their next opponent. The mission is to decode intentions. It is reasonable to wonder exactly where legitimate research ends and illicit activity begins. "Where do you draw the line?" Greg Dale, a professor of sports psychology and ethics at Duke University, said in a telephone interview. "It's just going to continue to go and go and go. It's going to continue to take us farther away from what competition is supposed to be about. Competition was not supposed to be about who can steal each other's signals the best." The N.F.L. found that the Patriots and Coach Bill Belichick might have been taping opposing sidelines since 2000. The league confiscated and destroyed notes that dated to 2002. It fined Belichick $500,000, the Patriots $250,000, and took away the team's first-round draft choice. "This episode represents a calculated and deliberate attempt to avoid longstanding rules designed to encourage fair play and promote honest competition on the playing field," Goodell said in revealing the sanctions. Goodell was backed by a rule. "No video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game," the league's Game Operations Manual reads. He also cited a letter that the league sent to teams in September 2006. "Videotaping of any type, including but not limited to taping of an opponent's offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines," it read, in part, a phrase indicating foreshadowing or the sense that the rule needed clarification. Stories soon emerged about teams using everything from lip readers to hidden microphones worn by defensive players. Most of those strategies were viewed as playful attempts to gain an advantage, part of the league's history. But what of its future? With the Patriots, Goodell drew a line -- or highlighted an existing one -- between right and wrong, at least by N.F.L. standards. Yet in a sport in which coaches live in fear of wandering eyes viewing their practice fields and bugs hidden in their locker rooms -- for valid reasons, presumably -- there would seem to be a limit to what the rules can control or warn about. "We value people who are clever in interpreting the rules," Stoll, the Idaho professor, said. "We have this ethos, and that is to push the rules as far as we can. Now, throw in the factor of technology. What are they going to do about it?" Spying in football may be more tempting than in other sports because so much of the game is scripted. Teams run planned, choreographed plays. How much of an advantage would an offense have, for example, if it approached the line of scrimmage knowing exactly what defense it was to face -- which players will rush the quarterback, which receivers will be double-teamed, which direction the safety will head when the ball is snapped? That is the information all teams want, and what the Patriots were caught recording. Interestingly, the N.F.L. may combat technology with more technology. Last year, the league nearly approved wireless communication among coaches and one defensive player, similar to that allowed with quarterbacks, who have a speaker in their helmet. The topic will be raised by owners again this spring. Such a system may eliminate the need for defensive signals on the sideline -- and the urge to record those signals. But teams already fear that wireless signals to the quarterbacks can be intercepted. Every permutation of technology seems to add another layer of possibilities. What if a fan in the stands intercepts the messages with a receiver bought at Radio Shack, then passes them along? What if a team employee cracks the code from the sideline or the booth? What if a coach simply overhears an opposing coach in the next booth shouting instructions into the headset? What is cheating? What is gamesmanship? "You do have to draw a line," Dale, the Duke professor, said. "You do. But people will continue to push it further and further, and that line is going to get more and more fuzzy."