over an eight-year stretch, right up until the moment when the New York Jets set up a sting to catch them, they were secretly recording opponents’ sidelines during games in order to decipher their signals. How often? Forty separate instances between 2000 and 2007, according to ESPN. They also allegedly sent low-level employees into visiting teams’ locker rooms to steal their play sheets, so the Pats would know opposing teams’ first 15-20 plays of the game.
When they got busted, their cozy relationship with Roger Goodell meant that not only weren’t they punished in a manner that might have dissuaded future bad acts; the commissioner tried to bury the scandal, going so far as to destroy the evidence the league had gathered during its brief, three-day investigation—which led to heavy criticism from then-Sen. Arlen Specter