🐚 Under the Boardwalk, Down by the Sea, Yeah, On a Blanket with My Baby Is Where I'll Be🍹
Ladies, gather around the embroidery hoop because I have something important to explain.
You know how sometimes a family has a little tradition? Grandma makes the Christmas cookies. Mom makes the potato salad. Somebody inherits the silverware.
In the Belichick family, apparently, the family business is finding out exactly how close you can get to the rulebook before somebody starts asking questions!
Now, before anybody throws a tomato at me, Steve Belichick has not been declared a football cheater. That is important. What happened at North Carolina is considerably messier. The university investigated conduct inside Bill Belichick's football program, and on Thursday announced that Steve, the defensive coordinator and Bill's son, will resign when his medical leave ends on October 27. UNC said the investigation found certain actions that demonstrated a disregard for the school's standards of conduct, while also saying those actions were isolated rather than evidence of a systemic failure.
But if you're sitting there thinking, Wait a minute. Isn't this the Belichick family?
YES.
That's the part that makes this so horribly uncomfortable for a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
Because Bill Belichick built an entire football mythology around preparation, secrecy, discipline, exploiting tiny advantages, and generally making everybody else feel like they had forgotten to read the instructions.
Then came Spygate.
Then Deflategate.
Then approximately seventeen thousand hours of television programming devoted to explaining whether Bill Belichick had discovered some apocalyptic loophole in the fabric of football itself.
And now his son is leaving North Carolina after an investigation into conduct that the university says fell short of its standards.
At this point, ladies, I don't even know whether we're watching football or an especially aggressive episode of Judge Judy.
The Steelers, meanwhile, have spent generations cultivating the beautiful Pittsburgh tradition of looking at New England and saying, essentially, “Oh, come on.”
We know cheating accusations. We know suspicious advantages. We know what it feels like when the Patriots are standing there looking innocent while everybody else is holding the evidence in a ziplock bag.
But this new chapter is different.
The alleged conduct involving Steve wasn't simply some clever defensive formation that made a referee scratch his head. Reports said investigators questioned witnesses about whether he used drugs while working or provided drugs to at least one player. Those allegations were part of a broader investigation, and the university ultimately did not publicly spell out the specific actions behind its conclusion.
So, no, we shouldn't call Steve Belichick a football cheater as a proven fact.
But can a Steelers fan sit back with a cup of coffee, look at the entire Belichick situation at North Carolina, and quietly mutter, “Like father, like son?”
Sure.
And frankly, ladies, that's what makes football so wonderful.
You can spend decades building a reputation for being the smartest guy in the room.
