Overblown Non-Story of the Week (Week of Nov. 10)

This week's Overblown Non-Story of the Week award goes to former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula's comments regarding the New England Patriots, and the subsequent fallout of those comments.

Football fans will, of course, remember the big story after Week 1 of the NFL regular season. The New England Patriots were caught video taping the NY Jets coaches on the opposing sideline during their game, in violation of NFL rules. Patriot coach Bill Belichick was fined 500,000 dollars, and the team itself was fined 250,000 dollars and will be forced to forfeit their 1st round pick in next April's draft. The incident also set off a ton of conversation about how significant this form of cheating was, and speculation about whether the Patriots, winners of 3 Super Bowls since 2001 under Belichick, had been cheating their way to the top for several years.

All the Patriots have done since then is run their record to a perfect 9-0, in one of the most dominant runs the NFL has ever seen. As always happens when a team goes deep into the season without a loss, talk of the '72 Dolphins, the only team ever to have a perfect season, arises. As such, the NY Daily News got an interview with Don Shula, the coach of that team. As you can see here, Shula indicated his belief that the "Spygate" incident at the beginning of the season would diminish the Pats' accomplishments.

Now, don't get me wrong, a Hall of Fame coach like Shula giving a take like this is noteworthy, to a point. Where this story has gone horribly wrong is that we've now reverted back to the discussions of Week 1, with the "Spygate" incident taking a significant presence on talk radio once again. We're back to debating just how significant the Patriots' transgression was, had they been cheating all along, are they still cheating, etc? All of this was a legitimate story after Week 1. Dealing with it again after Week 9 on a large scale is totally unnecessary. I particularly "enjoy" listening to "experts" tell me exactly how history will view the 2007 Patriots ten years from now or more. If I could see the future with that kind of clarity, I think I could do a little better than hosting a sports talk radio show, but that's just me. It's impossible to know in 2007 how history will view the 2007 Patriots, so making that question the focus of debate, again, for multiple days seems to me to scream "Overblown Non-Story".