Citation Needed - Bill Belichick and the Art of the Loophole

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

William Stephen Belichick (/ˈbɛlɪtʃɪk, ˈbɛlɪtʃɛk/; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who is the head coach and general manager[a] of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Widely regarded as one of the greatest head coaches of all time,[2][3][4] he holds numerous coaching records, including the record of most Super Bowl wins (six) as a head coach, all with the Patriots, along with two more during his time as the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants, for the record of eight combined total Super Bowl victories as coach and coordinator.[5] Belichick is often referred to as a "student of the game", with a deep knowledge of the intricacies of each player position, and is known as a renowned American football historian.[6][7][8][9] Under his tenure with the Patriots, he was a central figure as the head coach as well as the chief executive during the franchise's dynasty from 2001 to 2019. And is a cheaty cheater who cheats. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

So I'm confused Tom trapped himself underground. All right, so he just kept punching, but he was facing down, you know? So it's kind of like a baby in a well situation at that point, because he won't stop punching. Because he won't stop punching exactly. Oh, wow. And you're dead.

Come on, I didn't even move that round. I literally did not move in. Guys, what's all the hubbub here? Uh, Heath is showing me all the games that he cheats at. That's not cheating. I win strategically and skillfully. Sorry, I was like, like what? Games. Okay, let's see. Uh, Tiktok Toe. I was go first. Nimm, solve game. And of course, super street fighter two for Super Nintendo.

Corner trap. Corner trap. Exactly. Cecil, thank you. I mean, Heath, Fighter II for Super Nintendo. Corner trap. Corner trap, exactly. Cecil, thank you. I mean, Heath, don't get me wrong. I like that you're keeping with today's episode, and I'm sure Cecil is grateful that the studio isn't destroyed, but are you kind of ruined in the fun of these games? What? No, winning is so much fun.

Right, but you don't always win, do you? Hmm. Pretty much always win. I mean, you can just throw for the corner trap and street fighter at the... I mean, you could try. That's two out of three. Nice. Where's Tom? Punching his way to the Earth's core, Eli.

Got it. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. The podcast where you choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be a giant fucking cheater this week, but I'll need my accomplices. Person to help me cheat on my diet, cheat on my taxes, and cheat on my driving test,

Heath, Noah, and Eli. Okay, it's not cheating. My diet is ethically non-monarchic. That's the truth. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and Cecil, the trick to cheating on your taxes is you just make so little money that the IRS doesn't give a shit.

And you know, I've pretty much got away with anything. One simple trick. And I'll have you know that a driving test is about the only test I haven't cheated on Cecil, which is why I failed at a brand price. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey patrons, no jokes here.

If you really like the show, I want to ask you to be a patron today. Pause the show, go to Patreon, join in. And you too can make sure this show happens each week. And with that out of the way, tell us, Heath, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon phenomenon or event we'll be talking about today. We're gonna be talking about Bill Bellicek and the art of the loophole. Awesome. And what made you pick this topic?

Well, you actually helped Cecil. So, after hearing about Miyamoto Musashi a few weeks ago, who bent the rules a lot, but really just cheated people to death most of the time. Of course, I thought of William D. Bellichek. And my original plan was to do an episode about Bellichek. He's one of the most successful NFL coaches of all time, but also the cheaters. And most of his success came exactly during the cheaters moments that we know about. And while coaching a team that I hate.

And he's a fucking Republican. Fuck that guy. Not getting a whole episode. But all that being said, he's also an absolute master of finding very effective loopholes in the rules. And during those moments, not the cheating moments, but the ones when he was technically obeying the rules during those moments, I have to when he was technically obeying the rules during those moments I have to admit he's my favorite coach of all time

But to avoid giving that guy a full show We're gonna talk about a variety of my favorite loophole moments including yes Balochek begrudgingly, okay, but heath this moral stance makes your episode about eugenics if possible more terrifying I was doing a jade. It's a satire. As the guy who's supposed to link a Wikipedia article about these episodes after they release, I love this trend towards increasingly vague topics. That's it.

So where do we start on the history of almost cheating? Heath. Great question. great question. One of the earliest recorded loopholes goes back to ancient Greece. And it's one of my favorites because both sides of the argument were using competing loopholes that cancel each other out and led to a paradox. It's called the paradox of the court or the paradox of Protagoras. So Protagoras lived during the 5th century BCE and he was a Sophist or a paid teacher of philosophy and rhetoric.

Side note, he's known for being an early agnostic or atheist. Other side note, the word Sophist, now also means a person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments, you know, like a dirty fucking apes. Please don't use my only fan's name on air. I want people to find it naturally. So he's out to the content. All right. So he please tell me that the dude he loophole's here is named antagonist.

It's so disappointing that it's not. It's not so. Yeah. The best. So here's the story of the, it's not, it's not so. It'd be amazing. That'd be the best. So here's the story of the paradox according to the Latin author, Alice Jelius. A promising law student named Uathlis wanted to study with Protagoras,

but didn't have the money. So they made a deal that Protagoras would give the instruction for no charge up front, and Uathlis would pay the tuition after becoming a lawyer and winning his first case. But then Uathlis decided to become a politician instead of a lawyer, and Protagoras sued him for the tuition money. Protagoras argued, if I win the case, I get paid.

And if I lose the case, the kid wins his first case and has to pay me. So either way, I win, so just pay me now. But you affless argued, if I win the case, then I don't have to pay. And if I lose the case, then I still haven't won a case, but I did argue a case as a lawyer, so I don't have to pay. So either way, I win, so just throw out the case. There's no record of who won sadly, but it's pretty sweet paradox. They just screamed, I'm not touching you until they died.

I think we all won. I think we all won I think it is sad though that courts 2,500 years ago were adjudicating not touching can't get mad and we've only gone down the hill since that right all right so now we're gonna get into some sports this brings us to a loophole story that is very close to my heart, featuring the New York Yankees. Ooooooh! On July, thank you.

On July 24th, 1983, the Yankees are playing the Kansas City Royals, and the Yankees are up 4-3 going into the last inning. But with 2 outs, the Royals best hitter George Brett hits a 2 run homer to give the Royals a 5-4 lead. But then the Yankees manager, Billy Martin, walks over to the home plate umpire and demands to examine the bat that Brett was using to check for a violation. So the rule says you can put pine tar on the bottom 18 inches of the bat where you hold it to give you extra grip. But anything over 18 inches is illegal and you get called out. And here's the key.

Billy Martin already knew the pine tar was a little bit over the line, the whole game. And he was just waiting for the perfect moment to invoke the rule. And a go ahead home run by the other team in the ninth inning was the perfect moment. Yeah, Putin's doing the same thing right now with a golden shower p-tap.

Yeah. Yeah. Same idea, same idea. So the Empire checks the bat. And technically, yeah, Billy Martin was right, so technically, the umpire has to cancel the home run and George Brett gets called out instead, which would end the game. So the umpire points over to George Brett in the dugout and calls him out. And George Brett flies into a murderous rage.

He sprints out of the dugout and tries to literally murder Billy Martin and that umpire with his hands. It's actually a great video. I put a little link for you guys to watch it. I watched this video. He starts running way too fast. The only way the speed at which he starts running makes sense is if the riff was like and murder me.

But here's the thing about him running too fast though because it's it really is genuinely one of the greatest videos of performative manliness of all time because he makes it to the empire too quickly. He's got time to move his hands a whole bunch until somebody can grab him and then he can like go crazy and get more aggressive. It's fucking hilarious. Guys, we'd go on three fuck your stuff is slightly ahead of me. Just uh second, hold me back. But now hold me back. Hold me back.

Hold me back, yeah. It's now hold me back for sure. Yeah. So George Brett runs onto the field like a WWE surprise entries. Big fight breaks out. And while that's happening, the Batboy at Yankee Stadium grabs that pintar bat to get it off the field for the next play. Just get it out of the way.

But then one of the Royals players, Leon Roberts, runs over and rips the bat out of the kids' hands and passes it off to another teammate, Gett Lord Perry, and Perry tries to run away with the bat to get rid of the evidence, get it in their locker room. But Perry gets caught by one of the Yankee Stadium's security guards and the illegal bat of cheating, which it is, gets returned to the authorities before it could be tampered with. And Perry gets ejected from the game,

along with George Brett. Wait, he got ejected from a game that was already over, was he like, you can't fire me, I quit! Fuck you! Yeah, pretty much. I would just like to say, I feel like Waffle House and professional sports are the only ones who get to, but I think all professions should break out in brawls

every so often, it would be good for them. It would be good if I had an occasional brawl. Yeah. No downs occasional brawl. Yeah. No downsides to that. But the story's not quite over yet. After the game, the royals filed a protest, and the league officials ruled that, yes, George Brad technically broke the rule.

But Billy Martin's the fucking worst. He hates that guy, and they really do. Everybody hates him unless you're in the Yankee band. And they're like, no, we're not letting that guy do a loophole trick against Major League Baseball here. So they overruled the umpire and made the Yankees and Royals restart the game a few weeks later in the top of the ninth inning with the Royals leading 5'4

as if the home run had counted. And here's my favorite part. Billy Martin had a second loophole ready to go when they did the restart. And it's based on the rule about a runner failing to touch a base. If somebody's running around the bases, the umpire has to see them touch every base. And if there's a dispute, before the next pitch, for the next batter, the pitcher can step off the mound and throw the ball to a base that they think got missed. And if the umpire noticed it got missed, the runner from that last play gets called out from missing the

base. So Billy Martin knows the new umpires for the restart game aren't the same ones from the original game, which means they couldn't possibly know technically whether George Brett touched all the bases after he hit that home run three weeks ago. So that's his plan. So did Billy do any baseball stuff or was it all just spy versus spy trap shit? There was a lot of traps. He won a world series, but he was known as like this guy who would do this. So the game restarts in the ninth inning and the Yankees pitcher throws over to first base and they actually throw over to second base two just to be sure to check those bases

But the umpires still uphold the home run and then Billy Martin of course comes out to argue and the new umpires are like Oh, hey, hey Billy fuck your face. We already thought of this. So they pull out Notarized affidavits She's from your original umpires Stating that they saw George Brett in person step on all the bases. So the game finally gets going and the Yankees lose five to four. Sad ending and technically based on cheating, but the spirit of the game, I suppose, was upheld.

Exactly. Because no matter who wins at baseball, it's boring and that's what matters, right? I can go. They give the pitch clock now. It's slightly faster. Yeah what matters, right? I can go. Oh. They're sped. They give the pitch clock now. It's slightly faster. Yeah, I know that it is. It is.

It's an it's slightly more interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little more stealing now. The bases are bigger. Anyway, that brings us to the sport of soccer, where we get two of the craziest loophole moments of all time. I'll start with the World Cup quarter final match between Uruguay and Ghana in 2010. The loophole in question is a situation where the advantage of breaking a rule carries

more weight than the disadvantage of the official punishment. So the game was tied one to one after 90 minutes and they went into extra time. And it was still tied with only a couple minutes left before it would be decided in a shootout. But Ghana put together a last minute flurry of offense and was about to score a nearly certain game winner getting a header past Uruguay's goalie. I like that. And soccer takes 90 minutes for someone to decide to be committed to scoring. That's great.

Yeah. They were trying. It's slow sometimes. But Uruguay striker, as that ball passes the goalie, this guy, Louis Suarez was standing on the goal line to help defend. The ball's about to go past him into the net and he reaches up with his hands and he makes the save as if he's a goalie, which he is not. He knew he'd be removed from the game with a red card for the intentional handball and

also give up a penalty shot, but it was absolutely the smartest play at that moment. Right, that's the thing to do. It seems like if you're ahead, you just line everyone up at the goal and wait out the rest of the match. No, I'm just missing. I mean, before you get a great big piece of plywood, yeah, you know, it's a shame nobody thought of that.

That's easy. What, you can give them all red cards? I don't know, I just found housing. I'm just, where's that line?'m just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm picturing 11 guys and like in my head to see if they cover up the entire like area of the gold mouth. I don't think it quite works, but you can cover a lot. It's been done a little bit. So instead of a certain loss in that situation by allowing a goal with time just about to expire, it was a penalty shot

for the other team, which only has about a 70% chance of scoring for the shooter. So this guy, Louis Suarez, bought his team a 30% chance of surviving the moment up from basically a zero-percent chance. And it worked. Gone to miss the penalty shot, time expired, seconds later, so being down a player didn't even matter. They went to a shootout to break the tie, where again, being down a player also doesn't matter. And Uruguay won the shootout. So yes, Suarez was reviled, but a, not in Uruguay, where he's a goddamn hero, and b,

if you're reviled in sports, that's often a huge compliment. Also c, he ended up going on to bite three different players, famously. What? What? Yeah, he was gonna be hated either way, eventually. I just, maybe I just lack imagination, but that sport is so fast.

I can't, I can't think of a soccer situation where you even could bite another player without like, diving at them teeth first. That's, that should be its own episode. That's a weird side note. It's a weird one. It like, it was like a Tyson Holyfield thing. Like they were in close and he thought nobody would see.

He just bites one guy on the shoulders. The one I, I can picture him ahead. Anyway, so just to make me love slash hate him extra. Suarez added some trash talk about this last year. He was doing a press conference during the World Cup in Qatar and one of the reporters said, hey, so, Louis, many people in Ghana consider you to be the devil himself

after that intentional amble in 2010. Thoughts and Suarez responded, I do not apologize. The Ghana player, Mr. penalty shot, not me, his fault. Whoa, Jesus. All right, but for real, when somebody says, what are your thoughts on X and your immediate response is a screamy, well, I'm not Y.

If you think that, that's not it. You're a Y. You're so very, very Y. He's super duper Y. Yeah. All right, well, that brings us to another amazing soccer loophole, but really, it's a loophole for econ nerds, which I also enjoy.

So this one involves a set of perverse incentives that were created by the rules of this particular tournament. And the incentives were so ridiculous that the entire Game of Soccer got turned inside out. I mean, that literally, like in terms of physical direction, the game of soccer got turned inside out. It happened during the 1994 Caribbean Cup in a match between Barbados and Grenada. The basic situation was Barbados needed to win the game by two or more goals to move

on to the finals. Grenada would move on if they lost by one or if they won by any score. And the format had no tying. If the score was even after 90 minutes, they'd play 30 minute periods of sudden death over time until somebody scored. The extra wrinkle was that a golden goal, a goal during sudden death over time, was worth two goals on the official score sheet. That was a stupid rule. No, technically the golden goal is banging Betty White, Blanch, and B. Arthur.

Don't you? Both easier and harder to accomplish these days. Oh no, Jesus Christ. Don't, what? So, no, I got it. I got it. I wanted to not, I wanted to not, but I did. So Barbados got themselves a two-nothing lead, which would get them through to the finals.

But in the 83rd minute, Grenada scored their first goal, making it two to one, which was good enough for Grenada to move on instead. Again, they could lose by one and still advance. So Barbados had to score another goal right at the end to regain the two goal lead they needed, or they could do a genius loophole thing. With only a few minutes left, Barbados scored on their own net on purpose, making it 2-2, which would send the game into overtime, giving them at least 30 extra minutes to score a golden goal, which is worth two points, which would make the score 4-2 enough to advance

to the line. I love it. The one time soccer is interesting, and it's because of an oversight on the rules committed of the game. Yeah, because of perverse incentives like an econ lesson. So here's where it got crazy. With the score tied at two two after the intentional own goal from Barbados, Grenada realized the best strategy was to score a goal in either net. With a normal goal, they'd win the game three to two.

And with a goal on their own net, they'd lose the game three to two, but still advance to the final. Either way, they'd avoid overtime and prevent a potential two point golden goal. And Barbados, of course, knew this weird situation too. So for the final three minutes of the game, Grenada players were trying to score on either net. And Barbados players split up and defended both nets. So we got the first ever three minute game of inside-out soccer.

In the end, Barbados defended both goals for three minutes, successfully. It went to extra time, and they scored in the 94th minute, giving them a delightfully hacked 4-2 win. And of course, a place in finals. Wow. Well, so far, we talked about soccer and baseball, so let's take a short break so Heath can quickly research sports where things happen. No, it's... ...hahaha. All right, teams, gather up. Sure, F.

Yep. You got it, Reff. I thought you guys were from Barbados and Grinada. Why wouldn't you have accents? It's these little threatened to cut the sketch. Yep. No, that makes sense. Okay. So, as you know, these guys just scored on their own goal tying up the score.

So to win it, you are going to need to score on either goal to win or lose by one and move on. Got it. Wait, wait. So, now we have to defend both goals. Well you would but it turns out that happier team are the evil twins of half of their team. So by changing outfits at half time actually both of your later half scores were for the other team. So you're going to need to score four goals on yourself or find the secret twins for the other team and get them to score on their own goal

without giving away their identity, obviously. Also, two of them are werewolves. Guys, guys, maybe we should just do, like, bracketed tournaments with a certain amount of eliminations instead of a league score-based system that creates situations like this. I mean, at this point, soccer's complexity is the only reason the rest of Europe talks to Britain,

so I kinda like to leave it as is. Yeah, that's fair. Sure, why not? Hey, I heard someone is a werewolf, and I don't want to say for the record, but it's definitely not me! Ow! It's a weird sport we do. Ow! Not me, ow! It's a weird sport we do. Ow! At the beginning of the show, Heath promised that our favorite hoody villain would be the focus.

Let's see if we can deflate his reputation, huh? Okay. Oh, nice. He's still just called Trayvon Martin of villain. Okay. That's not so easy. Okay. And now it's time for Bill Belletcheck.

I think it's positive to talk about him now against all odds. Again, I hate this guy, but I also kind of love him. But I'm gonna start with his bad stuff to make sure the context is 100% clear. He's a cheater who cheats, because he's a cheater who cheating cheats. And two of the biggest examples are a scandal called spygate and a scandal called deflategate.

So in spygate, Belchec and his team, the Patriots, got caught taking illegal video footage of the opposing sideline during games. This let them decode the hand signals that were being used by the coaching staff to communicate the plan for the next play to the team on the field. This wasn't a loophole or a hack. You just aren't allowed to do that. Yeah, there's just a rule. Yeah. Okay, but what if I'm a nerd? Do you have a metaphor based on a video game from 1988 for us non-sports time? I do. If you're not a football person, just imagine the game as battle chess.

But instead of taking turns, both teams go at the exact same time, and they each move 11 pieces all at once. And if you know exactly where the 11 pieces of your opponent are about to go, you obviously have a giant unfair advantage. So that's why there was a rule. Yeah, no, and I also have to speak to the bellicic apologists

here who try to no big deal this shit away by pointing out that, you know, every coach in the NFL covers his mouth when he's calling plays to prevent exactly this type of cheating. Everybody knows that it's going on. But like, I want to remind you that that like you lock your doors when you leave your house, even though breaking into it is illegal. Absolutely.

Also, fuck you. You're from Boston. So the spiky thing came to light in 2007. In addition to what I just described, the Patriots also got accused of videotaping the practice sessions of other teams, which is when they're running through the exact plans for their future moves and battle chests against the Patriots. This one never got fully proven and the Patriots made ridiculous excuses that somehow worked. I'm pretty sure they did this. In one example, a staff member for the Patriots

was definitely taking video at another team's practice facility, but he claimed he was doing a documentary for science or some bullshit. That excuse worked. What's my documentary called? It's called the other team plays football. Don't say documentary men. So either way, the science

dealing definitely happened from at least 2000 through 2007 during which time the Patriots won three super balls and racked up a bunch of impressive stats for all their players. It's impossible to put an exact value on all that cheating, but it's enormous. I mean, just in terms of TV deals, advertising, hosting playoff games, and selling future tickets and future merchandise. Tens of millions of dollars. Tens and tens possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, 10s and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars. And just for comparison, the penalty from the league was $500,000 for Bell Check. He has a net worth of about $60 million right now.

And $250,000 for the Patriots organization as a fine, they're worth about $6 billion as a franchise. And the team lost one draft pick in 2008. So basically nothing compared to what they gained. Proper punishment would be to have the patriots to draw straws and then Bill has to decimate them like a Roman Union. That's right.

Now that's a fantasy draft, right? That's right. Seriously, 31 out of 32 NFL teams would vote for what you just said. So if you can. All right, well, please be 10 Brady, please be 10 Brady, please be 10, please be 10. All right, well, that brings us to deflate gate. Again, just straight up cheating. So for every NFL game, each team brings a set of game balls and they get to provide the ones that get used when their team is on offense.

So the Patriots were in control of the balls being used by their star quarterback Tom Brady. Take that, Jazew. He's also a Republican. He sucks. And a somewhat deflated ball is easier to grip, throw, and catch better for the offense. But the rule is simple. Each ball has to be inflated to a pressure of 12.5 to 13.5 pounds per square inch. And during a game in 2015, the balls from the Patriots got checked, and they were all a bit low with some being extra extra low. Just by itself, I guess that's kind of minor, and it's not 100% clear that anything was done on purpose. But during the investigation that followed, we learned about a locker room video showing

an equipment manager from the Patriots taking all the game balls into a bathroom for about 90 seconds right before the game. So, unless that guy was shitting with a giant bag of footballs to help him out emotionally, which is insane, there's no reason for that to happen, except treating this guy with a football fetish is trying to explain. I was just deflating them.

Sorry, guys, all I heard was that NFL locker rooms have cameras and I am in my Tom Cruise era. Right. Let's do it. What? You're going to see some penis. So, after more investigating by the NFL, we also learned about a series of text messages between two staff members from the Patriots, Jim McNally and John Yostremsky.

They texted about inflation, deflation, needles that get used for inflation and deflation of footballs, and even McNally getting personal gifts from Tom Brady. In one of the messages from 2014, McNally refers to himself as literally the deflater. So pretty fucking clear. So the NFL decided it was very obviously intentional cheating and Brady eventually got a four game suspension a year and a half later after a bunch of appeals. Well, question sports people. What is the NFL get access to people's texts? Like, I get it. If you think

they cheated, you can punish them in your sport, but are there football detectives and warrants? What happened? Yeah. There's Congress involved actually. Right. Yeah. No, but more importantly, why do people text about their crime? Shit right why would you burn I'm cheating into the digital fucking record like that you So from there the deflate gate investigation got even crazier and this is my favorite part because we end up with Physics professors from New England screaming at each other about Boyle's law in Markey Mark accent. So a couple weeks after the initial incident the NFL hired attorney Ted Wells to get the bottom of the issue and Wells hired a physics lab to run a series of Experiments and theoretical models to determine if the deflated balls were

just running low because the cold air on the field made the pressure go down. Eventually, the Wells report came out and then every single physics person who ever watched a Patriots game lost their goddamn minds and started publishing absurd new studies of their own with their own research that they did. Being like, the Patriots probably inflated the balls with their normal plasma cannon that's standard and then the balls got deflated by the cold air is a big fucking contrast there plasma to cold that's difference this included MIT professor John Leonard who posted a lecture on YouTube called taking the measure of deflate

gate in which he put together a giant Smackdown in his head of the Wells report yelling about how the lab was ignoring the concept of absolute pressure with respect to ideal Gas law and a bunch of other physics nerd stuff. He concluded quote, if I had to stake my reputation and my career on it, the Patriots balls match the ideal gas law prediction and I don't know why people can't get that. You know, the best way to solve this whole thing is to leave the equation on a blackboard in the hallway and have some Boston genius figured it all out. You know, as I said it, Boston genius, I'm sorry, I'm just my apologies, I'm sorry. Nonsense, I don't even understand the words.

It was a fantasy movie. So'm sorry. Nonsense. I don't even understand the words. It was a fantasy movie. So yeah, that was all cheating. Now we'll move on to the hacking. I'll start with Bell Checks hacking of the rules about injury reporting. The basic idea is that every team has to report the injury status of their players in the days leading up to a game. Lots of professional sports leagues put this rule into place in order to prevent illegal

gambling schemes often run by organized crime So mob guys they used to try to get inside information about injuries to inform their betting and if they got close to any key players They might set up other illegal gambling schemes So the injury reporting made it all public information instead of insider information kind of diffused the illegal stuff I think they should have to tell us who's gonna win according to the script as well. Right, yeah. So... Side note though, I think it's awesome that we've spent the last 50 years thwarting organized crime

by just becoming less moral as a society. Right? Wait, it's usually the Elliot and that's it, nothing on fuckingDraftKings.com. Right? This is the good Elliott and that says nothing on fucking draftkings.com. So here's how the rule was supposed to work. You had to list all your injuries and your team could get in trouble for omitting a real injury from the report as a way of misleading the other team. But there was nothing in the rules about a penalty for including a healthy player on the report.

And really just no way to prove, even if there was a rule. You just had to describe each player as either probable to play that game, questionable, doubtful, or out. So Bell Check started listing just about everybody on the entire team as probable or questionable. And there's no way to be proven wrong about those words after the fact. Bell cheques injury report included superstar quarterback Tom Brady every single week for three straight years during which Brady played in every single game. Okay, now to be fair, Tom Brady has been retiring for the last three years and that's pretty questionable.

Well, and honestly, like there was always a question of whether the league was going to catch up to all the cheating and suspendum. So maybe that's Bella check just being overly honest, right? Sure, yeah. Another amazing loophole that Bella check exploited was related to the headsets that coaches were to communicate with each other during the game.

And each team gets one player on the field who has a communication device built into their helmet. So it's pretty important, especially if the other team was, I don't know, secretly videotaping your hand signals, then it would be pretty important. And there's an equity rule that says if the communication system for one team malfunctions, then the other team has to shut down their system too until both are working again.

So of course, Belicek was going to abuse that rule. During a game in September of 2015, with deflate gate fresh in everyone's mind, the Pittsburgh Steelers were playing the Patriots in New England, and the headsets for the Steelers stop working. All they can hear is the local Boston radio broadcast of the game, which is just obnoxious. The problem doesn't go away, and they tell a referee to activate the equity rule. So the ref starts walking over to the New England sideline to enforce the rule. And just as the ref gets there, the Steelers headsets start working again.

And this pattern kept going for the entire first half. I'm a feeling Bill Belichek's younger siblings fucking hated him so much. Yep, yeah. Older siblings, people in the world. Yeah. So the Steelers coach made a big deal about the headsets after the game and people started talking about headset gate. And other coaches around the league started grumbling about a headset hack in the other direction too that they think the Patriots might have been doing. Apparently the headsets for the patriots would just happen to stop working at key moments during the game, forcing both teams to shut down. Yet somehow, the patriots always seem to have a handful of scripted plays ready to go at those exact moments. This one never got proven as intentional, but it was so fucking clearly

intentional and pretty smart. And we consider it that Bill Bellachack is some kind of magical creature that interferes with electronics, right? There's a deal. Here's the stupidest party like the entire system is completely in the hands of whatever stadium they're playing in. Right? So for a League with $142 billion, a shocking amount of shit is just done on the honor system here. Right. You're right.

Just like crimping a hose. It's so late. Right. So weird. Did it work? So another great hack from Belicec was figuring out a way to run a big chunk of time off the clock near the end of the game when his team was winning.

Again, the football words, I guess they don't really matter. Basic idea, he realized he could have his team commit a foul over and over again, and the penalty for that foul didn't really matter, but the value of milking the clock was huge. After each penalty, the clock would start again, and he'd run off like another 30 seconds or so during which time the other team never got to touch the ball. And I especially enjoy this one because the NFL had to hold a dedicated meeting just to be like, fuck, okay, we hit this guy's ass. And we have to rewrite the rule book just for him. Here we go. We have a dedicated meeting for this. And honestly, that's the ultimate compliment.

So now the clock stops for the Bella check thing in that situation. That's the rule now. Yeah, if people wanted to watch minutes and nothing happening, Ghana and Yergaier in the finals conference, I don't know how to do this. You've got to know what to say. All right, so the fact that he thinks of,

you play with such an unprecedented lack of sportsmanship that we had to adjust the rules to account for it as not just a compliment but the ultimate compliment. That tells you all you need to know about playing games with. This is why Anna canceled the elbow touching game heath you play things. Oh, did I 37 to 13 Eli how wrong is that? Winning and if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence what would it be? I learned that winning isn't everything Are you ready for the quiz what no fucking course it is that's sure it's obviously it's the it's the thing It's good. Are you ready to win at the game at the quiz? I'm ready to win at the quiz

All right, Heath we've talked about some big old cheats from the world's of sports this week, but who did you leave out? Hey boxer Antonio Margarito who soaked his wrist wraps in plaster of Paris in hopes that no I don't as he was fucking boxing wearing Michelangelo's David on his that no one would notice he was fucking boxing wearing Michelangelo's David on his iPad. That was amazing. B, I swear this is real. I Wikipedia did. I really did check.

This is real. The 2000 Spanish Paralympics basketball team who were stripped of their gold medal after it was revealed that 10 out of 12 of their players were not disabled. Jesus Christ. Wow. Or C. Every single football lineman is on a massive amount of steroids and we're not even pretending that they're not at the same.

Like 400 pound guys that can run it fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, most of the other positions too. Yeah, it's not just. Was it C or all of the above? It felt like all of the above actually did. It was secret answer D, all of the above positions. Yeah, it's not just was it C or all of the above it felt like all the above actually

did was secret answer D all of the above well done. All right, he's what's the best football related or castles on a t shirt cannon and D three point stance of the sugar plumb fairy. See? That's a good song. Teaky barber of Seville or D. Deflator mouse. Nice. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Okay. Excellent all around, but deflator mouse.

This is my fucking paper. That is correct. I nailed it. All right, so I got one more for you, Heath. What's the best example of a bella cheat that you left out of your essay? A. There's more? Yeah.

Oh yeah, there's so much more. I just could have been a much longer. You could have done a whole essay on him. No, he's that fuck that, he's a Republican. Absolutely. Yeah. A. The fact that he would sign players cut from other teams that he was about to face

to get inside info about trick plays and shit Shut up be that time the browns coach swore that bellicite got a copy of the jets playbook before the matchup and even named the dude who see he said gave it to him See the fact that when he was told that he was required by contract to wear only Nike branded stuff on the sidelines, because they're like the official outfiter of the NFL. He insisted on making their clothes look as shittiest possible by adopting vindictive frumpiness as his signature style. I feel like you didn't have to adopt it. Well, yes, it happened.

Or D, that time that he convinced us, he was a great coach when he was actually just an epic level cheater that lucked into history's greatest quarterback. Wow. Look at that guy's record when he was the Browns coach in Cleveland. Just take a look at Tom Brady's record

when he's in Tampa Bay. So, he's got that super bowl. You gotta give him a high. I don't know what we're yelling about! Ha! Ha! All right. I gotta go with E all the above.

I believe I remember all of them. It is E all of the above. Oh, he ate you win this week. Alright, next week, let's get a little Eli in there. Yeah, he's still right. Why, that's not true. Well, for Noah, Eli, and Heath, I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with us today.

We'll be back next week, and by then, Eli will write something, and we'll talk about it. Between now and then. What's your actual PT? Yeah, I already see sometimes he does. Between now and then, We're at GPT, okay? Yeah, we're already seeing sometimes he does. Between now and then, you can catch cognitive distance with Tom and I, or your God awful movies with Heath,

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be sure to check out citationpod.com. You gotta believe me, I'm the real Steve. No, I'm the real Steve. I-I don't know who to shoot now. Oh, there aren't any silver bullets in that gun. We get it, Alan. You're a werewolf. Got it. You are.

Ow! No, you literally are. Yep, you are. you literally are yep you are don't that's nonsense I hate you