Cheating?

It has come to light that the New England Patriots of the National Football League have been outed as spies. A former assistant coach for the Patriots now is the head coach of the Jets, and he has reported them for their spying tactics. This last weekend the Pats were caught videotaping the defense calling plays, and there was also some suspect radio frequency use during the game. I would speculate that the suspect radio frequency use was due to the illegal communication of video-taper with possibly the play-caller, or it could have been used to eaves drop on the Jets calling their offensive plays.

Maybe it is because I don't have money riding on the games, but I find this both intriguing and exciting. Supposedly ou would do this to Texas. Surely there are other teams that have done the same.

Is it really cheating? My first thought was that this was somewhat hypocritical on my part because of how I see performance enhancing drugs as an unforgivable cheating tactic. My second thought, which was really just a validation of my "thin-slicing" of the situation, was that this was not really cheating. Sure there might be rules against it and that would technically make it cheating, but you can counter it. It is called counter-intelligence. (Heck, why do you think base coaches look like a monkey doing sign language?) And in comparison to drugs, you can't really counter that unless you break rules to do so. Just my thoughts. I would love to hear some feedback on if you think it is cheating or not.

Update [Fri 9/14/07]: I am unsure why, but this topic has me listening for it quite a bit on television. In doing so, I have come to learn that it is not against the rules to try and decipher opposing teams signals. Also, many teams do work at the counter spy tactics. Where the Patriots have gone wrong is that they are using videotape. This is a league violation because the league does not want technology to take over the competitiveness of the game.