What's all the fuss? Nobody spies like us

Somewhere they have to be laughing, all the college coaches. They're giggling about how all the crap ended up on the desk of Bill Belichick, the mastermind. The High Priest of Hubris who can absorb a $500,000 fine without blinking. The guy who mints Super Bowl rings.

Or maybe there really is a super-secret reason why the Patriots won all those championships.

Oregon's Mike Bellotti, chairman of the rules committee, says the new filming rule is 'just a reminder.' (Getty Images)

That's another discussion for another time. Anyway, they're chuckling to themselves, the college guys who know how or know someone who knows how to, um, gain an unfair advantage on the field. Spygate? That would be only a drop in the sleaze bucket if you know college football history, or start chatting up current and former coaches, or check the NCAA rule book. In the 2008 version, which has yet to go to print, the rules committee felt compelled to add language this year that specifically addresses Spygate.

Section 4, Article 9-g reads: " ... any attempt to record either by video or audio means signals given by an opposing player, coach or player (is prohibited)."

"It was just a reminder, or a rephrasing, so we don't get into the situation that the NFL did," said Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, chairman of the rules committee.

"The one thing that is apparent is we're a reactive body. The NCAA is really not prepared with the onslaught of people who find a way around the rules. Almost all the legislation is a result of somebody coming up with a different method to create an unfair advantage."

College football has been mostly quiet on the subject since Spygate made cheating a national conversation. But, shoot, the college game practically put the curve in bending the rules. At least the lore is better.

• Remember Piggy Barnes? You're excused if you don't. It was only 58 years ago that the former LSU player was accused of spying on Oklahoma practices before the 1950 Sugar Bowl with the Tigers. Ol' Piggy tucked a ladder between two garages and used a telescope and a camera to do the dirty deed. The difference was, in those days there weren't reasoned meetings with commissioners.

"We all charged this guy and tackled him," Ned Hockman was quoted as saying in Bud Wilkinson: An Intimate Portrait of a Legend.

Hockman, Oklahoma's film guy at the time, had four gentlemen with him to help "discuss" the situation with Piggy.

• Barry Switzer once acknowledged in this biography Bootlegger's Boy that, yes, Oklahoma sent spies (note the plural) to Austin before the 1976 Texas game.

• Only two years ago, a West Virginia student was caught spying on a Marshall practice. The kid had a notebook full of the office and cell phone numbers of the West Virginia coaches. No word, though, on if the student had a job waiting for him in Ann Arbor.

Former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh added some present-day depth to the issue last week when he threw Charlie Weis' name into the hopper. Walsh told the New York Times that Notre Dame's coach, a former Patriots offensive coordinator, was among an "inner circle" who had knowledge about the taping of opponents' signals.