Bob Ryan is the pre-eminent sports columnist in Boston, and is also
recognized nationally. Here's are some excerpts from his most recent
column, titled "With Belichick, the cover up is most revealing":

Bill Belichick has placed Patriots fans on the defensive for the rest
of their lives. There can no longer be any doubt that he engaged in a
practice he knew was against the rules.

[Belichick] has been exposed as being monumentally disingenuous at
best and utterly duplicitous at worst.
The sports community now associates the Patriots with cheating. The
three Super Bowl championships are, and forever will be, under
suspicion. The thought will never go away.

The Patriots have been irrevocably stained. They will be, in the eyes
of many, the reverse Black Sox. They will be the team that broke the
rules. Their three Super Bowls will be regarded as ill-gotten gain.

And Bill Belichick still hasn't fessed up. Bob Kraft should be livid.
He has to live with the reality that he presides over the most
despised and reviled franchise in all of contemporary American sport,
and all because the coach he trusted has betrayed him.

[Belichick] has turned out to be far more complex than we ever
dreamed, hasn't he? Whoever would have believed Bill Belichick would
have had such a tangled personal life? Who really knows this man?

Whatever his motivation, it wound up manifesting itself in colossal
arrogance. For after being warned about continuing his illegal
practice in a 2006 game at Green Bay, he did it again in, of all
places, Giants Stadium the very first game in 2007. What kind of a
statement was that? Was he saying "(naughty word) you" to Eric
Mangini, a former ally who was now The Enemy?

Remember the ultimate moral of Watergate: The cover-up is worse than
the crime.

Now we know that Bill Belichick covered up, and may still be covering
up. Matt Walsh says he was told to prepare a cover story for his
activities, even as Bill Belichick continues to insist that he had
"misinterpreted" the rule in question. He alone of the 32 coaches was
confused. Amazing. The commissioner didn't buy it, and neither should
anyone else.

The cover-up is what matters now. Bill Belichick has yet to seek mercy
from the National Court of Public Opinion. He has his story, and he's
sticking to it. He's going to stonewall it, just as he stonewalls a
routine injury inquiry. It's just his nature, apparently.

There is no way out. As long as Bill Belichick is the coach of the New
England Patriots, America will despise this team.

Read the entire article at
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2008/05/18/with_belichick_the_cover_up_is_most_revealing/