Patriots game goes straight to video

America at Large:According to the commonly accepted rules of warfare, spies may be shot. Exactly how the National Football League deals with espionage agents, on the other hand, will become clearer tomorrow, when commissioner Roger Goodell has summoned representatives of the New York Jets and New England Patriots to a hearing at the league offices.

The Jets are expected to present compelling evidence a Patriots staff member, disguised as an accredited photographer, videotaped and possibly relayed their defensive signals to the enemy in last Sunday's season opener at the Meadowlands - a game the Patriots won handily 38-14. New England will be allowed present their own case, if any, but the circumstantial evidence would seem fairly damning.

If Goodell rules the Patriots cheated, the punishment could be any combination of a hefty fine, forfeited draft picks, or even a suspension of coach Bill Belichick. At least one New York newspaper yesterday demanded the result be voided and the game replayed in its entirety.

NFL guidelines specifically prohibit teams from operating recording devices on the field, in the locker room, or in the coaches' booth in the press box while a game is in progress.

As the teams left the field at half-time on Sunday, security personnel working for the Jets stopped Matt Estrella, a 26-year-old Patriots employee described as a "video assistant" on the team masthead, as he was about to enter the visiting team's locker-room at Giants Stadium. Estrella wasn't exactly incognito: he was wearing a Patriots-logoed shirt underneath the sideline photographer's vest the league issues to accredited photographers and had in his possession a hand-held video camera.

What was described as an "animated discussion" ensued, with NFL security and, eventually, New Jersey state police summoned to the interrogation room. Over Estrella's protests, the videotape was confiscated and forwarded to league headquarters.

There have been subsequent allegations that in addition to taping the Jets' defensive signals, Estrella was using hand signals to relay the information to Patriots personnel, who in turn transmitted it to the New England huddle.

Jets safety Kerry Rhodes said it seemed as if New England quarterback Tom Brady "knew just what we were doing".

Those, from this vantage, would appear to be two separate issues. If Estrella was intercepting and transmitting signals, why did he need a camera? It might also be noted that during the second half, played while Estrella was in custody, Brady completed 10 of 11 passes for 138 yards.

A certain degree of chicanery is expected in NFL games, of course.

Coaches transmitting plays from the sideline commonly shield their faces with a play-sheet to discourage lip-reading. Players newly arrived from another franchise are routinely debriefed on their former team's terminology and signals.

It seems unlikely the Patriots are alone in pursuing this extra edge, but at the moment they find themselves in the embarrassing position of being the only team accused of it - and there have been rampant suggestions the practice may have been going on for years. (This likelihood is further bolstered by the fact the Jets coach Eric Mangini is a former Belichick acolyte who broke into the league with a job description remarkably similar to Matt Estrella's.) The other issue is why the Patriots, who have won three Super Bowls since 2002 and appear to have their strongest team ever, would need to resort to underhanded tactics to beat anyone - particularly the Jets.

The answer, of course, is that in sporting matters, everyone is always looking for an edge.

When he came out of retirement to challenge for Marvellous Marvin Hagler's middleweight title 20 years ago, Sugar Ray Leonard also resorted to a bit of espionage. His longtime friend and matchmaker JD Brown was sent to Hagler's training camp in California on an intelligence-gathering expedition.

Brown, who disguised himself by dyeing his hair grey and wearing horn-rimmed glasses, watched Hagler spar for three days. Before he left Palm Springs, he even queued up with the autograph-seekers and had his picture taken with the champion, just to prove he'd been there.

When word of the spy mission leaked out, it was widely regarded as good, clean fun, but hardly instrumental in the outcome of the fight.

"Ray had worked the television broadcasts of half a dozen Hagler fights," an associate pointed out. "How was he going to learn anything new?"

But Brown, now a jockey's agent at the Maryland tracks, confirms he actually did come back with information Leonard was able to use to advantage in that historic April 6th, 1987, fight.

"I did notice a couple of things," Brown recently recalled. "One was when I watched him spar with Floyd, Lloyd, and Troy Weaver. The Weaver triplets were young junior middleweights, too quick for him, and when they'd flit around the ring, it pissed Hagler off. 'Stop running and fight, you little bitch,' he'd snarl at them, so I knew Ray could frustrate him by doing the same thing.

"Another thing I noticed was that as soon as the bell rang, Hagler moved straight to the centre of the ring. That was his domain. That's where he wanted to be. So I knew that if Ray got there first Marvin wouldn't like it," said Brown.

Leonard was able to put the information to use in engineering one of the great boxing upsets. Of course he, unlike, evidently, Matt Estrella, was operating within the rules.

According to officials, Estrella was "shaking like a leaf" as he was grilled in the bowels of Giants Stadium on Sunday. Bill Belichick doesn't commonly betray much emotion, but we're just guessing he may be trembling as well when he faces down with the commissioner tomorrow.