Justice is served

Even if nothing more ever comes of the NFL's infamous "Spygate" scandal, the New England Patriots got their come uppance.
Tonight the AFC juggernaut was denied a perfect, undefeated record—a milestone achieved only once in NFL history.
The Patriots, who had completed only the second undefeated regular season in league history, could not finish what they started back in week one of the 2007 regular season.
But somebody upstairs has a sense of humor—not to mention a propensity for the ironic.
Fittingly, it was a team from New York that defeated the New England Patriots for the Super Bowl XLII title. It was a team from New York against which the Patriots were caught cheating on their own sidelines at Gillette Stadium in Foxsboro, Mass., in the season opener. Television cameras caught members of the Patriots spying on New York Jets coaches and players with cameras of their own, in a cheap effort to expose the latter’s playbook. Unfortunately, the Patriots were the ones exposed.
Even though it got caught, the New England ball club barely even received what amounted to a slap on the wrist for what is the equivalent of industrial espionage—a white collar crime and a felony.
The Patriots ended up winning the football game, followed by the next 17 games in a row. Yet, they were denied the last and most important win of all: the Super Bowl championship.
This is a New England team that had won three Super Bowl championships since 2001 and was en route to becoming only the fourth franchise in NFL history to win at least four Vince Lombardi trophies.
But every dog has its day. Cheaters never prosper, the old saying goes, even those who go 18-0.
I was prepared to write a column about the only NFL world champion with an asterisk beside its name. But thanks to the New York Giants, I am able to write about the world champions that the New England Patriots neither are nor deserve to have been after “Spygate.”
The Patriots thought “Spygate” was no big deal. It kept them neither from going undefeated during the regular season nor from the Super Bowl.
But “Spygate” did keep them from winning the most important football game of the entire NFL season. It kept them from becoming champions of the professional football world. And it denied them a perfect, unblemished record en route to a world title.
Well, actually justice did all that.
I hope the New England Patriots are hungry tonight, because justice is served—along with a heaping slice of humble pie. Don’t worry, though: the Pats have the next six months to digest it all.
Maybe next time, the idea of going 1-0 to open the regular season won't mean so much to the Pats that they would resort to cheating. Maybe 18-0 isn't all it's cracked up to be if you leave the biggest game of the year 18-1. Yeah, I know that 18-0 is pretty impressive. But the Giants, not the Patriots, are champions of the football world now. In the end, after all the money has been counted, winning the big one is what matters most.
And if you think you have to cheat just to win your first game, then you don't deserve to win your last.
Just ask the 1972 Miami Dolphins, still the only undefeated team in NFL history. The only undefeated regular season team? No, the Patriots share that honor with them. But not the honor of being the only undefeated world champion. That alone still belongs only to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who proved that you don't have to cheat to go undefeated. You just have to work hard and play by the rules.
Actually, Super Bowl loser befits the New England Patriots best this year, because true champions don't win by cheating; they win by being better than the rest. Tonight and for the next year, the New York Giants are the best. Neither did they have to go undefeated nor cheat to do it. They just played like the best.
Note to Pats: The champagne flows freely in Miami tonight for 35 seasons in a row and still counting...