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LOSER
Belichick's early exit shows he has no class
Wallace Matthews
February 5, 2008
Newsday
Sometimes a man’s character, if not his whole life, can be encapsulated in the blink of an eye. For Scottie Pippen, it was the moment he decided to sit down rather than play out the last 1.8 seconds of a crucial playoff game when he learned the final shot would not be his. For Mike Tyson, it was the moment he decided it would be easier to bite his way out of a beating from Evander Holyfield than to face it.
And for Bill Belichick, it was when he decided that 59 minutes and 59 seconds of a football game, no, the football game, was enough for him.
His Patriots had played a superb season, 18 straight wins, and a damned fine Super Bowl XLII, but now it was about to end. They had been outhit, outsmarted and outplayed by the underdog Giants, a team that was hungrier and, yes, just plain better than them on this night. With the Patriots having turned the ball over on downs, the three-point deficit New England faced now was officially insurmountable.
But there still was one second left on the clock. One more snap needed to be taken, one more play needed to be run, one more tick had to tock before they could put it in the books.
The game wasn't over yet and the players knew it, the officials knew it and the fans knew it.
All Bill Belichick knew was that it was over as far as he was concerned.
And so he took the walk that true losers take, the walk of shame, off the field and up the tunnel and out of any claim he once may have had to a sense of dignity or honor or sportsmanship. You know he didn't walk out of any stadium before the final gun of any of those 18 wins, but now he couldn't wait to run away from his only loss.
Way to go, Coach.
It really shouldn't come as much of a surprise to learn that Belichick is a bad loser; after all, he's a bad winner, too. Ask Eric Mangini, for one. But that doesn't make it any less disturbing or infuriating to watch.
The best time to judge a man's character is not when things are going well for him, but poorly. This was the first time all season that anything went wrong for Belichick and the Patriots. You saw how well he handled it.
Yeah, sure, he sought out Tom Coughlin, his conqueror, before he left, and did what it obviously killed him to have to do: credit another man for beating him. But he robbed Coughlin of the moment every Super Bowl-winning coach is entitled to, a gracious midfield concession by the loser.
So instead of the perfect season, we got the perfect sore loser, the perfect sourpuss, the perfect rat. The coach who couldn't even stick around one more second to pay proper tribute to a worthy opponent and lead his own equally worthy players out of the stadium in a respectful manner.
Of all the shameful and shameless things Belichick has done in the course of his career, that one second of disgrace should follow him around for the rest of his life.
Because this can't just be shrugged off as gamesmanship, as Belichick's apologists have done on Spygate, and it can't be characterized as a personality conflict, as they have done to justify his treatment of Mangini, and it can't be explained away as a shy, socially awkward man's bungling attempt to extricate himself from a bad situation, as I mistakenly did with his infamous "I hereby resign as HC of the NYJ" note of eight years ago.
No, this was simply a public hissy fit by a spoiled punk who couldn't accept defeat. There was nothing fluky or controversial or questionable about the Giants' 17-14 win. In fact, it was the kind of game Belichick should have admired, even if for once he came out on the wrong end of it. Instead, he acted as if he were the victim of some particularly heinous crime.
By walking away before the game was over, maybe Belichick thought he was diminishing Coughlin and the Giants, the way he tried to diminish Mangini and the Jets last season. But all he did was diminish himself and the players who had fought so hard for him all season. He brought shame upon an organization that had brought him nothing but glory. Regardless of whether they would be willing to admit it, he embarrassed his owner, his players, his assistant coaches and his fans. If he has any left.
There's no shame in losing but plenty of shame in losing gracelessly. In losing to the Giants, the Patriots had nothing to be ashamed of. They may have lost, but they weren't losers. On Super Bowl Sunday, that honor was the sole property of their coach.
Message edited 2/5/2008 12:09:36 PM.
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