It was a storied AFC East franchise, a winner of multiple Super Bowls. The head coach, a curmudgeon who’d been known to antagonize the media, was under fire. The National Football League had released a memo that very offseason warning against illegal videotaping. Yet he was in possession of a tape of a divisional rival, one he had just vanquished by an overwhelming score.

The year: 2006. The coach: Nick Saban. The team: The Miami Dolphins.¹

The familiar scenario and surprising punch-line underscore some of the most commonly repeated errors in the current “cameragate” controversy surrounding the New England Patriots, and their head coach, Bill Belichick.

Since the beginnings of the Patriots’ troubles in September 2007, it has been widely reported that an “offseason memo” had reminded teams around the league about improper use of videotaping equipment. What is almost universally left out is that the offseason in question was in 2006.

September 6, 2006
NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Ray Anderson writes in a memo to all 32 NFL teams, that videotaping is prohibited during the game.²

November 12, 2006
A New York Jets cameraman is caught taping by the Patriots in Gillette Stadium. When the story comes to light almost a year later, Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum tells the New York Daily News the story is  “completely false.” In December 2007, Jets Head Coach Eric Mangini characterizes the story as true. Mangini calls permission for such taping a “common courtesy” which NFL clubs extend to one another – despite the fact that the Jets’ employee was apprehended by Patriots’ staff and told to leave.³ No documents have come to light specifying that “otherwise illegal taping with permission” enjoys any special category of immunity from league action.

December 10, 2006
The Miami Dolphins defeat the New England Patriots, using an enhanced-audio videotape Dolphins Coach Nick Saban says he got from television, and Dolphins players say he purchased:

"Reaction around the league office was, 'That's football,' " AFC spokesman Steve Alic said.⁴

Neither coach nor players said the tapes were obtained from a structure “…enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead,” as mandated by the NFL’s operations manual, as regards the shooting of video for coaching purposes.⁵ The enhanced video does seem to fit the League’s description of the product of information-gathering equipment for coaching purposes. In the league's Constitution & Bylaws, it reads:

"Any use by any club at any time, from the start to the finish of any game in which such club is a participant, of any communications or information-gathering equipment, other than Polaroid-type cameras or field telephones, shall be prohibited, including without limitation videotape machines, telephone tapping, or bugging devices, or any other form of electronic devices that might aid a team during the playing of a game."⁶

September 9, 2007:
Members of the New York Jets security staff confiscate a camera from New England Patriots employee Matt Estrella, and “cameragate” begins.⁷

FRAMe maintains that this chronology matters. Sports pundits routinely and incorrectly infer “arrogance” from Bill Belichick’s actions, saying they flew in the face of “the offseason memo” – which was sent in the 2006 offseason. The implication in such stories is always that the Patriots saw a memo issued one month, and purposefully broke the rules reinforced by that memo the following month. Even stories that proffer no such opinions routinely refer to the “offseason memo” without reference to the year in which it was issued.

This brief one-year chronology also offers a window into the realms of interpretation that have seemed to be available to some coaches, but not others, despite a complete lack of prior written authorization in support of their interpretive claims.

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