Thanks for stopping by, bostonpPete!

I feel like it matters a lot, and sunny D addressed far better than I could have. It would bug me to no end if he were my coach and I want to understand if it bothers Pats fans or not.

Jim McCabe of the Boston Globe wrote an excellent piece regarding the history of the post-game handshake in the NFL, and have I reprinted some of it here for your viewing pleasure. I thought it interesting, if not informative, and hope you will too.
 
In [the past], competitors rarely stuck out a hand. Not the players and certainly not the coaches, from Halas and Curly Lambeau, to Lombardi and Paul Brown, and to legends who followed. What’s more, they were never questioned, either.

During a Hall of Fame coaching career with the Minnesota Vikings that garnered four Super Bowl appearances and 11 division titles, [Bud] Grant never wavered. “I never shook Halas’s hand or Lombardi’s hand after a game. That was my volition.”

“Tom Landry didn’t feel he had to go across the field to shake hands,” said the Cowboys’ longtime director of player personnel. Yet you will uncover Noah’s Ark before you find any evidence of media condemnation of Halas, Lombardi, Brown, Grant, Allen, Ewbank, Howell, or Landry for not shaking hands after a game. What’s with that? Why does the media analyze the Belichick handshake and rip him if it’s deemed lame or insincere?

The fact that a mere handshake becomes a story that frequently casts Belichick in a bad light makes it more personal to [Jerry] Glanville, now 66 and the head coach at Portland State, but still a fan of the Patriots’ coach. “We were on the staff together [special teams assistants for the Detroit Lions in 1976]. We were bachelors together,” said Glanville. “We skied together. We hung out and went on vacations. But when we coached against each other, we never ran over to swap spit.”

“Really, it’s an irritation more than something you want to do,” said Jimmy Johnson, who coached the University of Miami and the Dallas Cowboys to championships and works now as a pregame analyst for Fox NFL Sunday. “No [coach] wants to do it.” Johnson concedes he did it on most occasions, though begrudgingly (“You don’t want to be rude,” he said), but laughs about those times when he didn’t. Against Eagles coach Buddy Ryan, for instance. “I didn’t do it the time he put the ‘bounty’ on my kicker.” And with Bill Parcells, Johnson said he would merely wave, “but it was no big deal.”

“Don’t think for a minute that all 32 coaches love each other,” said Clary. “But they don’t need to shake hands to prove they have respect for each other.”

[Former Commissioner Paul] Tagliabue said that there was not going to be a rule against postgame handshakes and fraternizing. In fact, the league wanted to see it, thinking it made for a better image. NFL’s senior vice president of communications, Greg Aiello, wrote in an e-mail, “As a league, we encourage good sportsmanship.”

So does that mean Halas, Lombardi, Brown, Allen, Landry, and Grant, among others, were devoid of sportsmanship? They didn’t shake hands after games. Not at all, according to Clary. He said Halas and Lombardi were good friends, but while they would embrace one another off the field, never would they shake hands after a game. Their competitive nature wouldn’t allow it.

Belichick? He does shake hands, but apparently not in a manner that meets with the media’s approval, so he’s branded a bad sportsman. What gives?

[Many others prefer no handshake after the game] within the insular world of professional football, where it is accepted as a rough and brutal environment that demands a physical and mental commitment that isn’t for the faint of heart. If handshakes aren’t exchanged, so be it. “If we’re worried about things like [a postgame handshake], then we’re worried about the wrong thing,” said Glanville.

What I mean by that:

Stealing signs in baseball: gamesmanship or classless?
Cutting, roughing or loading the ball?
Pine tar a little too far up the bat?

Football: Un-caught holding on the o-line?
Messing with the injury report?
(This list is almost endless, and it goes back to the old days of coaches not exchanging game tape.)

Hockey: too much curve on the stick
Too much tape on the stick.

My point is that the line is variable, and that the outrage should match the degree of the infraction. And that, in any case, we take this whole sports thing way, way too seriously. The level of invective hurled at BB and the Patriots, as well as the fine levied, was completely disproportionate to the infraction (no, not a crime) committed. What most Pats fans object to is that lack of identity between the wrong done and the punishment exacted and condemnation hurled.

Especially considering that the most egregious aspects of the transgression were pure speculation, based on no evidence, unproven and unfounded. No tape of the Rams walk-through, no editing and subsequent in-game use of the other videos. In most cases the team filmed didn’t even show up again on the schedule for that year.

Finally, the absurd arbitrariness of the rule itself: If you had a guy in the stands doing exactly the same thing, it would be perfectly legal. A man waving his arms in full view of 60,000 people has no expectation of privacy.

The real “wrong” in the situation was lying about it. Twice. So that’s not classy. But the whole thing was blown utterly out of proportion.

Now, you don’t like Belichick because he doesn’t shake hands with some coaches whom he unrepentantly doesn’t like? OK. You don’t like him because he isn’t sorry for taping? Sure—he’s unrepentant about being completely competitive. Maybe he isn’t the gentlemanly sportsman we feel the viewing public deserves. Or maybe the press is tired of having to deal with his unhelpfully dry and impenetrable press conferences, so they feel entitled to stick it to him when they have the chance.

But I don’t think this is any special window into the man’s character. Competition in the professional football takes place out side the rules as a matter of course. When players or coaches are caught violating, they’re penalized.

Our cultural tendency to turn every instance into little morality plays is unrevealing about the parties involved. But it says volumes about the vapidity of our entertainment media, who are so fundamentally insecure about the sheer insignificance of their jobs that they need to pump up every moment with portent so great that when legitimately transcendent things happen, they have no way to describe them.

It’s a game. That’s it. It doesn’t mold young men. It doesn’t give life lessons. It can’t solve our problems and it rarely reveals true character. Rather than forgetting that football is a tiny piece of a bigger stage, I suggest we remember that it is merely tiny, merely a diversion, merely an entertainment.

The further in that direction we can travel as a society, the more in order our priorities will be and, I suspect, the more simple joy we will be able to take in our games.