To cheat, or not to cheat

I had a conversation with myself today and I figured why not share it with yall --

Lets suppose that on the eve of the first day of school the principal found that one of the students... lets call him Billy... had cheated and got all the answers to every test the school was going to have for the year. And lets suppose that the principal felt he had no choice but to punish Billy to such a degree that the school had never seen anything like it in its history.
Lets jump ahead to the last week of school, theres one test left to go, and looking back all at the previous ones, we see that Billy had not missed a single question and has gotten 100% on each and every test.
Would that surprise you that he had aced every test considering that he had already been caught cheating right before the school year started? And would it bug you that hes now being called the smartest kid in school, and will probably get an award for it?

If I had to stop and think about things, I think I might find that Im more upset for the praise being heaped upon little Billy Belichik than I am for the praise heaped upon his Patriots.

"The players still have to go out and play the game."

Its because of that that I dont necessarily hate the Patriots as much as I feel sorry for them. Granted, the players still have to go out and execute, but their coach already knows the answers to the questions, so even if the Patriots were awesome in their own right, theyre being placed in positions, in plays, that the coach knows will work - theyre benefiting from their coaches cheating, and thus, unfortunately, are cheaters themselves.

"But youre missing the point, even if they cheated, that didnt mean they knew everything that was going to happen in the game."

Very true, but there were a handful of games this year that the Patriots barely came out ahead in. The Giants, Colts, Ravens, Chargers, and Jets all had the Patriots within defeat, only to fall short themselves. And yes, I said the Jets. The Jets of New York lost to the awesome Patriots of New England by a mere 10 points. Those 10 points seem like nothing compared to how much the Patriots were beating other teams by.
So, even if all the answers werent known ahead of time, all it takes is one - one answer, one play - to push ahead. And what if, because of cheating, that one answer was the one to help them pull out a victory in a game they should have lost? And theres no way of knowing for sure one way or the other. So just because they didnt know all the answers, is that A+ still hard earned? Of course not.

So while the Patriots, by default, are cheaters, and Billy Belichick is unquestionably one, why does everyone continue to bow down to them when they walk by? Super Bowl victory or not, their "accomplishments" this year deserve as big an asterisk as anything Barry Bonds has done. Kinda sucks for them considering that this could have been the best year in NFL history, instead, it just proves again that cheaters do win.

-- DBW --