Regardless of whether it was practice or not they still cheated! How can you still root for an organization that cheats to win? You must be a person of low moral fiber. So no I have not found proof that they taped opponents practices but they did tape their opponents on the sidelines of live games to learn their offensive and defensive signals Then Goodell destroyed the tapes sounds like it was swept under the rug to me.
You have displayed so little basic knowledge of the incident that you have no business commenting on it. If you think there is no difference between filming a closed practice and filming signals that can be seen by 70,000 people then you have no business commenting on football period.
The tapes were available on Fox (probably leaked by Goodell's wife, a Fox employee) to Jay Glazer during the season. After a play ended it panned to the scoreboard for down and distance, then the three people signaling in a play, then the play. Rinse, lather, repeat. No mystery what were on the tapes; more of the same were shown in may.
Do you clamor for all the same evidence after every player suspension? No, of course not. Why? Because you're either a hypocrite, a troll, ignorant, or all of the above.
Do you troll Denver Bronco message boards, saying the same thing? After all they circumvented the salary cap en route to two super bowl championships. Of course not, because once again your NFL knowledge is extremely limted and you're incapable of an original thought.
Besides, that's where your former hero, Peyton Manning plays.
You're a one-time Colt fan living in Fort Wayne Indiana but you're too embarassed to admit that after last season's debacle. So now you pretend to be a Giants fan, boosting your bruised ego by attemting to get under the skin of fans of the team that ended your team's season so often.
You're not a fan - you're a pathetic frontrunner whose self esteem is so caught up in wins and losses that you find it necessary to claim you're a fan of whoever won yesterday.
We have dozens of fans of other teams that come here on a regular basis and engage in intelligent football conversation. Obviously that is of no interest to you. Instead you felt compelled to search out opposing fan forums and talk crap behind the security of internet anonymity. If that's your thing, go check out the websites of the four television networks that broadcast NFL games; they not only condone, but encourage that behavior.
Patriots have a higher winning percentage post-2007 than pre-2007. That larger sample size proves that the taping had zero effect, but that would require an understanding of probability and statistics - a class that you're probably several years away from taking, if you do ever take it. The biggest reason they haven't won since then is because of the way the NFL is set up, with free agency and a salary cap, to promote parity and have plenty of diiferent teams win. Second biggest reason is that many players from the early 2000's are gone, and thanks to constantly drafting 31st and 32nd it has been difficult to maintain that level of excellence - something you as a former Colt fan should be familiar with. Gary Guyton replacing Tedy Bruschi, Rob Ninkovich replacing Willie McGinest, Kyle Arrington and Devin McCourty replacing Ty Law and Asante Samuel, the 2011 Deion Branch replacing the 2003 Deion Branch, etc. - that's why the Patriots haven't won a championship the last few years.
A troll calling out somebody else for low moral fiber? The irony ...