League comes down soft on Belichick?

In the wake of cameragate, Goodell has levied his punishments and the football audience cries foul…still. What would suffice, jail time? Yes, it was cheating. Yes, Belichick, dubbed Beli-cheat, deserves punishment. He was fined a personal $500,000! While that may not be debilitating for a millionaire football coach, it is still the maximum fine that can be given by the NFL. The loss of a draft selection from next year’s draft, likely the team’s #1 selection, would potentially cripple any team save the Patriots; they have another #1 pick from the hands of San Francisco.

And this is where the outrage starts to make sense. People are not looking to make the punishment fit the crime. Instead, there is an assessment on the Patriots’ success and a determination of what punishment will most likely affect that success. If most other teams were caught cheating in the same manner, there would likely be a smaller fine and be docked lower draft selections. Then it would be case closed, who cares. With the Patriots, and especially Belichick, there is a pervasive sense that the punishment is being determined by who is guilty, instead of what they are guilty of. It seems how to make the Patriots suffer the most is more important than having a just and universal punishment. And didn’t Mangini hire that camera guy in the first place? It's simply hard to believe that stealing signals is not happening anywhere else.