One of the more intriguing anecdotes from the now-concluded league meetings arose via a report from Adam Schefter of ESPN that Patriots coach Bill Belichick engaged in a profane tirade regarding the league’s resistance to using fixed cameras to enhance replay review, supposedly due to the cost of the enhancements.
“They were in a meeting the other day with Dean Blandino, the head of the officials, and Bill Belichick got up there, and in profane language, told the NFL: ‘We spend money to send the Pro Bowl to Brazil, we spend money to go overseas to London, but we can’t spend money to have four cameras in the end zone, four cameras to help determine the correct call in the end zone on certain plays?’ He went off, and the way it was explained to me, from people in the room at the time, they were laughing at it because his language was so profane and because he was so incensed about it, and the NFL didn’t know how to handle it,” Schefter said on ESPN2’s Olbermann.
Three different sources who were in the room at the time say Belichick did not engage in a profane tirade. One source said there may have been a single F-bomb uttered by Belichick while sharing his views on the league’s reluctance to invest the money necessary to install fixed cameras along the sidelines and goal lines, but the source added, “I’ve heard much worse in that room during discussions.”
“The quote was something like, ‘Let me get this straight, we can bring this game to Brazil and effing China but we can’t afford to put a camera in a pylon?’” one of the sources said. Another source said he heard no profane language at all, which suggests that any profanity was uttered with a classic Belichick mutter, not as rant.
Belichick’s point was that the notion that cost prevents the use of additional cameras seems to be a pretext for the real reason, and that the folks resisting the increased use of cameras should just provide the real reason.
