Spygate, the NFL and regulation

by billso on Friday, 9 May 2008

NFL logoFrom the Asso­ci­ated Press via Sports Illus­trated and Forbes: National Foot­ball League com­mis­sioner Roger God­dell has announced that the league will enact and enforce tougher reg­u­la­tions regard­ing tech­nol­ogy and spy­ing for the 2008 sea­son. The NFL has allowed radios for offen­sive play-calling since 1994, but mobile com­puter and video tech­nol­ogy have advanced far faster than the league’s reg­u­la­tions ever anticipated.

The three-time NFL cham­pion New Eng­land Patri­ots have been the sub­ject of intense scrutiny after a staff mem­ber was caught video­tap­ing defen­sive coach­ing sig­nals dur­ing the team’s 2007 sea­son opener. The NFL and Sen­a­tor Arlen Specter (R-PA) are each inves­ti­gat­ing mul­ti­ple alle­ga­tions that the Patri­ots had been video­tap­ing oppos­ing teams since coach Bill Belichick was hired in 2000.

For­mer Patri­ots employee Matt Walsh recently sent 8 video tapes of Patri­ots oppo­nents to the NFL office for analy­sis. Accord­ing to Mike Fish of ESPN, at least one tape included offen­sive coaches from another team. Pre­vi­ously, it was believed that the Patri­ots only taped defen­sive coaches.

What about the FCC?

Most of the dis­cus­sions I have read about the so-called Spy­gate scan­dal have missed an impor­tant legal point. The NFL depends upon large multi-billion dol­lar con­tracts from US tele­vi­sion net­works for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the league’s rev­enue and mar­ket power. Every regular-season and post-season game is tele­vised. The NFL also owns and oper­ates its own tele­vi­sion net­work, which car­ries 8 reg­u­lar sea­son games, many pre-season games, and a 24/7 stream of inter­views, doc­u­men­taries, replays and other NFL con­tent. See this arti­cle from CBS Sports for more details.

The Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC) has spe­cific reg­u­la­tions on how sports may be broad­cast in the United States. One key rule is that live tele­vised sport­ing events must be “free of arti­fice”. In other words, games can­not be rigged or fixed in any way.

This is one rea­son that pro­fes­sional wrestling broad­casts use a great deal of taped and edited con­tent. Pro wrestling is mar­keted as , not a sport­ing event.

“When we met with [the] com­mis­sioner, the dis­cus­sion was how we pro­ceed in an era when tech­nol­ogy is expand­ing expo­nen­tially,” Indi­anapo­lis Colts pres­i­dent Bill Polian said. “The ques­tion is how do we keep on top of that. This is far less about what hap­pened in the past and how we deal with it in the future.”

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Tagged as: crime, FCC, football, hardware, legal, management, nfl, privacy, sports, telecom, USA, video

  • http://billso.com billso

    Indi­anapo­lis Colts head coach Tony Dungy gave a moti­va­tional talk at Tampa Jef­fer­son High School this week. The Dungys still have a home in Tampa, where he coached the Buc­ca­neers for sev­eral years.

    I like his response to a ques­tion about Bill Belichick and Spy­gate. The fol­low­ing is from joe Henderson’s arti­cle in the Tampa Tri­bune:

    Then some­one asked if any­thing hap­pened last sea­son that he wished he could include in the book. What fol­lowed was vin­tage Dungy. He seized the open­ing. He brought up the video­tap­ing scan­dal with the New Eng­land Patriots.

    “We talk about how impor­tant it is to do things the right way and have integrity so that when you do win, peo­ple can never ask that ques­tion,” he said. “That’s the great thing that I’m happy about with our team.”

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