Jan 23, 2016 4 min read

Anyone remember Spygate?

How about Deflategate?

In case you forgot, it was at about this time last year when Tom Brady and the New England Patriots were being accused of making the footballs a little easier to grip for the quarterback on a wet, windy day in Foxborough, Mass., by letting some air out of them.

Only someone who has never thrown a football farther than 20 feet or is covering up for the Patriots and/or the NFL would dismiss the value of playing with an easier-to-grip ball on a cold, wet and windy day.

Remember how Brady was supposed to be suspended for four games, then he wasn’t?

Here we are in late January again with the Patriots favored to win another AFC Championship game and go to another Super Bowl.

And with that comes all the talk about Brady being the best quarterback of all time and his coach, Bill Belichick, being the greatest coach ever.

Rating a coach the best ever based on his won-loss record is perfectly understandable.

Rating a quarterback the same way is ridiculous.

And, sorry, but any discussion of Belichick’s and/or Brady’s greatness that includes wins, losses and passing statistics is meaningless if it also doesn’t include Spygate.

You remember Spygate. It began on the opening Sunday of the 2007 season. A Patriots’ flunky was caught videotaping the signals of New York Jets’ coaches on the sidelines.

Before it was over, former Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Spectre was threatening a congressional investigation.

Commissioner Roger Goodell swooped in and ordered all the evidence destroyed. This was after he fined Belichick $500,000 and the Patriots $250,000 and taken away a first -ound draft pick.

One of those AFC Championship wins Brady and Belichick picked up was against the Steelers in 2002. Brady actually left with an injury in the first half and was replaced by Drew Bledsoe.

Pittsburgh fans and many in the media will remember that game as the one Kordell Stewart lost, even though the final score was 24-17, two of the Patriots’ touchdowns came on special teams and Jerome Bettis played on one leg.

Here’s what ESPN The Magazine found from its investigation:

“Inside a room accessible only to Belichick and a few others, they found a library of scouting material containing videotapes of opponents’ signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons. Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots, 24-17. Almost as quickly as the tapes and notes were found, they were destroyed on Goodell’s orders: League executives stomped the tapes into pieces and shredded the papers inside a Gillette Stadium conference room.”

I won’t bother mentioning the Patriots only got into the championship game because of the famous, “Tuck Rule Miracle” the week before.

Would Bill Cowher have another trip to the Super Bowl and Bill Belichick one less if the Patriots had not known the Steelers’ defensive plan before the snap?

Pretty good chance.

The Patriots are heavy favorites to advance to another Super Bowl today and, as far as we know, there hasn’t been any cheating.

But it’s early.

If they beat the Broncos and get Belichick and Brady to their fifth Super Bowl win together, you can bet most of your favorite network commentators will declare the conversation about the greatest coach and greatest quarterback in history to be over.

And you can bet few, if any, will be impolite enough to bring up Spygate.

• Bob Nutting was in Coral Gables, Fla., Thursday representing the Pirates at the Major League Baseball owners’ meetings. The labor agreement with the players expires next December and owners have to make sure a revenue-sharing plan is in place before they make a new deal.

Pirates fans would be much better served if Nutting and other nonmajor TV market teams would stand together and insist on getting a share of the local television revenue from major-market teams.

Why shouldn’t the Pirates insist on half the TV revenue generated from the Mets’ television contract when they play the Mets?

Of course, Nutting feels no pressure to force the issue because major-market teams have bought him and the other smaller-market teams off with just enough shared revenue to make them profitable.

And Nutting saw that enough people showed up during 20 consecutive years of losing to fatten his wallet and double the value of his team.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.