I hate the New England Patriots and their organization, and the only National Football League franchises that I loathe more than the Patriots are the divisional rivals of my beloved New York Giants, and I root for the Pats to lose every game they play except for the three games every four-years when they play the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, and Washington Redskins. However with all of that said, I have always respected the dynasty that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady have built in New England, and I hate this scandal about New England deflating the footballs to give them an advantage in the AFC Title Game vs. the Indianapolis Colts even more than I do the team that is seemingly responsible for the scandal.

As someone who loves and respects sports history, the last things I want to think about are cheating and related scandals. I enjoy some of the more nerdy aspects of sports (and history in general), and one of them is compiling lists of which teams, players, coaches, and dynasties are the best. I devote more time to these things than I probably should, and I hate thinking of cheating because it gets in the way of my rankings. How should I rate Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens when there is clear evidence that they used performance enhancing drugs? How should we view the Baltimore Ravens 2012 Super Bowl-winning team when Terrell Suggs and Ray Lewis both suffered injuries that should have cost them the entire season (a torn Achilles tendon for Suggs, who was the reigning Defensive Player of the Year at the time of his injury, and a torn bicep for Lewis) and both came back with almost superhuman quickness and playing better than they had when they were initially hurt? I hate having to answer these questions rather than just trying to place Bonds, Clemens, and the 2012 Ravens in some historical context.

However there is one element to the Patriots’ role in what’s being called “Deflategate,” that makes it easier to be morally outraged about the Pats’ alleged behavior than the other scandals I mentioned, and that is that the act – which seems small and was almost certainly neither the cause of nor necessary for the Patriots 45-7 thrashing of the overmatched Colts – seems par for the course with the image that the public has of Bill Belichick as an arrogant cheater who views himself and his team as being above the petty rules that must govern the other 31-franchises in the NFL. Most of this perception is the fault of Belichick’s own administration and the fact that he was caught back in 2007 recording the defensive signals of other teams during games, a practice that was and is banned by the NFL, in a scandal that became known as “Spygate.” It has not helped the case of the Patriots and their fans that before Belichick was busted for spying in 2007, the Patriots routinely won big games as heavy underdogs, as they did on the way to the franchise’s first championship in the 2001 season, and that since Spygate the Patriots have not won the Super Bowl and have lost some big games as heavy favorites; most famously, they went into Super Bowl XLII as the first team in league history to win its first 18-games of the season, only to lose that Super Bowl to the Giants and finish 18-1, costing them what would have been prime position in the ‘best single-season team ever’ conversation.

Spygate has slightly tarnished the Patriots’ legacy as the first true NFL dynasty of the post-free agency era, but until now Patriots defenders could brush off criticism from players like Marshall Faulk and Kurt Warner (the two most prominent members of a 2001 St. Louis Rams team that came into Super Bowl XXXVI against the Patriots as 14-point favorites before losing 20-17 to those Patriots, and who have both accused the Patriots of secretly taping a closed practice session for those Rams in the days before the Super Bowl and using the ill-gotten knowledge to upset the Rams) as mere sour grapes. However, the existence of Inflategate means that Spygate is news again because it all seems just as much a part of the Belichick/Brady years as the usual 12-13 win season and accompanying first round bye. Patriots’ fans are nervously hoping that the scandal doesn’t somehow get worse and that the penalties the franchise will likely have to pay for this latest shady scandal doesn’t get in the way of the fourth Super Bowl trophy they have been chasing since the 2004 season, and that they all expected long before now.

The historical implications of Super Bowl XLIX are what I’d much rather be writing about today; we have a game where the last NFL team to repeat as champions is trying to keep the Seattle Seahawks from being the first team since them to win back-to-back Super Bowls; a game where the two teams that were the best in their conferences for most of the season made it to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. The Patriots come in having played in four-consecutive AFC Championship games, and with a win they would join the 5 teams in NFL history to win at least 4 Super Bowls, a club led by the Pittsburgh Steelers with 6, the San Francisco 49ers and Cowboys with 5, and the Green Bay Packers and Giants with 4; with a loss they would tie the Broncos (who were also dispatched there, as the Pats will be if they lose, by the Seahawks) for the most losses in SB history with 5. Tom Brady is making his third attempt to equal the record 4 Rings won by Steelers’ hall of famer Terry Bradshaw and 49ers legend Joe Montana, and it his fourth attempt to equal Montana – Brady’s boyhood idol, by the way – with 3 Super Bowl MVP awards. This is what I want to talk about, but instead we’re left trying to determine where to rank one more scandal for the man Patriots’ haters can resume happily calling “Belicheat.” Belichick, in his arrogance, has sullied his own name, but he has also made the history of the NFL a little foggier, and for a sports nerd like me, that’s only slightly less distasteful than the thought of Belichick standing atop the podium after winning his fourth Super Bowl and sporting his familiar smug grin, secure in the belief that he’s gotten the best of us once more…and us knowing that he’s probably right.