Bill Belichick is a name that conjures up many images to many people.  A leader, a coach who has built a dynastic football franchise that is the clear flagship of the NFL.  A controller, a man who obsesses on detail and demand complete loyalty and obedience.  A winner, a man who is all about winning games and will do whatever it takes to acheive that result even to the point of . . .   A cheater, someone who is willing to gain a competitive advantage even to the point of breaking the written and unwritten rules of sport.
 
We know that the Patriots have been caught cheating and we suspect that New England isn’t the only team that has pushed the limits of scouting on opponents.  Sooner or later someone was going to come along and realize that football is a battle between teams and one of the most important facets of the battlefield is information, commonly referred to as intelligence.  In the past, sports espionage has been limited to stealing playbooks or notes and deciphering signals.  To do this you needed what is referred to as HUMINT or HUMan INTelligence.  You needed bodies on the ground to infiltrate your opponent.  Whether you recruited your own people to gather the information or were able to turn someone with access to the information you desired (sometimes referred to as a mole) it involved dealing with people.
 
However, as technology increased football coaches realized the benefits.  The NFL has always been a cutting edge league looking for advantages.  Modern technology has allowed coaches to do much more than could have been done just a decade earlier.  Helmet radios, instant replay, sideline communications, etc, are not common place on football sidelines.  And it only took a matter of time for someone to see the advantage of gathering intelligence beyond the common method of scouting the opponent in games.  With the ease of the flow of information came the vulnerability to modern espionage.
 
Bill Belichick and the Patriots were reportedly caught filming an opposing team.  There are also reports that the Patriots fitted players with microphones on the field to hear opposing calls.  The Patriots head coach is also rumored to have file cabinets filled with information on coaches in the league, information gathered both openly and less scrupilously.  Am I supposed to now believe that this has JUST occured in the past year or so?  Is the American public naive enough to believe that this hasn’t been going on for a long time?
 
Let’s think about the advantages a truly enlighted coach who pushes football espionage to the limit.
 
-Football teams practice plays before using them in a game.  Viewing and filming opponents practices can alert you to formations, plays and possibly the strengths and weaknesses of individual players.  This fact is not a secret though so outside of part of the preseason NFL practices are usually closed.  One way around this might be to offer a strong financial incentive to lesser team personnel to either allow the placement of covert video/audio equipment or getting copies/originals of a teams practice tapes (yes, teams often tape their own practices too for later review).
 
-Many football coaches keep a great deal of notebooks and journals with formations, notes and plays.  Some of these might be theoretical but many might be plays actually used in games.  Ways to accumulate this information could be in talking to other coaches at previous stops and getting a hold of plays and notes left behind.  Going through the coaching box after a game and looking for notes or data sheets left behind (perhaps in the trash).  Paying lesser team personnel for copies of playbooks or going through offices after hours or even hotel rooms when teams travel searching for intel.
 
-Players are often cut during the season whether in preseason or during the season.  Some are let go because of injury.  These players will usually have some level of knowledge of the systems they played under and the on field calls and reactions to certain formations, situations or personnel.  Picking up a player from the wire and bringing them in and picking their brain about their former team is called “debriefing”.  Additionally, assistant coaches can also be fired and might be willing to trade their knowledge and materials still in their possession for monetary gain or employment.
 
-Coaches commonly signal plays and calls from the sideline.  Offensively this is done through radio transmission.  If an opposing team could decipher these transmissions they should be able to listen in onto these discussions and would have real time intel on what the offense is running or attempting to do.  This would be a huge, immediate advantage for any kind of defensive coordinator or coach.   Recording what the quarterback says on the field when he is audibly changing the play (and then matching this up to footage or photos later) would benefit a team the next time they played or later in the game if deciphered in time.
 
-Defensively these calls are sent in by hand signals.  Breaking this code would allow a team real time intel on what the defense is going to do on a given play.  This is what the Patriots were attempting to do to the Jets.  By videoing the coaches calls and matching them up with photos or other means would give their intel team time to decipher the calls by the second half or at least during the second half of play.  Defensive calls can similarly be decoded with microphones and video as offensive calls would be stolen.
 
-During halftime teams discuss the first half and make adjustments where necessary.  If surveillance equipment could be installed in a sufficiently covert manner then the intel team could gather a great deal of timely and relevant information that could be used during the second half of the game.  Counteradjustments could be made and a team could gain a decisive advantage on the field.  This would more likely be limited to the home team which would have physical control of their home stadium’s lockerroom.  And have much greater latitude in placing and recovering the equipment used.
 
-Now when it comes to espionage there is also the specialty of counter-intelligence.  This could involve the protection of the data your team considers classified as well as interfering with your opponents ability to gather information or simply degrade their ability to operate normally (active jamming).  This could involve cutting off a team’s sideline communications at crucial times in a game or scrambling the helmet radio used by the opposing quarterback.  Although the NFL demands that if one team is inhibited that the other team also be inhibited this can still be used to great benefit for a team.
 
For example, former 49er coach Bill Walsh used to script the first 20 plays of the game.  Coincidentally, there were often communication failures in Candlestick Park at the beginning of games where sideline communications would have to be restricted for both teams.  Now to a San Francisco team that already knew what plays were going to be run it was not an issue.  To the defensive coaches that could no longer relay their defensive calls to the field it was a major disadvantage.  Teams could “selectively” suffer communication malfunctions at decisive points in a game where it would benefit your team to limit your opponents ability to react to what you are doing.
 
We all know of the stories of Paul Brown turning off the hot water in the opponents locker room, Al Davis bugging locker rooms or George Halas spying on practices.  This part of football has been going on for a long time but it seems only recently has a team put forth the effort and determination to try and perfect it.  At least as perfect as it’s ever been done so far.  The football world will never look at the Patriots the same again and if more information about the true extent of Belichick’s operation begins to leak out . . . the NFL itself might never seem the same.