New England Patriots

Football's origins are from English Rugby, which goes back to 1823. Our American form of football slowly evolved from around the same time. Colleges were organizing football games around 1865 just after the end of the Civil War. As the years progressed, more rules were made. On Nov 6, 1869, the first intercollegiate football game was won by Rutgers, 6 goals to 4 goals over Princeton.

In 1873, the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed, comprising Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale, with 15 players allowed on each team. The game was dangerous and many players were getting injured. Rules committees were formed and various changes to the game were made.

Around 1895 was the beginning of professional football and in 1922 the NFL was formed out of the American Professional Football Association (which started two years earlier).

One of the first stops is patriots.com, the official NFL webpage. From their history page

"Professional football arrived in New England on Nov. 16, 1959, when a group of local businessmen, led by former public relations executive William H. 'Billy' Sullivan Jr. was awarded the eighth and final franchise in the new American Football League."

The franchise had to be given a name so they decided to leave it up to a vote. Thousands of entries came in and 74 votes for the "Boston Patriots" gave them their name. A Boston Globe artist drew a cartoon of a minuteman snapping the football. Sullivan loved it and it became their team logo.

The Pats won their first preseason game against the Buffalo Bills 28-7 on July 30, 1960 but lost to the Denver Broncos 13-10 in their first regular season home-opener on Sept 09. The team was renamed the New England Patriots in March 1971.

Geek fact: The Patriots became the first professional sports team to launch their own Web site in 1955.

Head coach Bill Belichick was hired by owner Robert Kraft and made the Patriots into an "elite" NFL team. The Patriots earned the best winning four year record under Belichick's leadership from 2001 to 2004 (57-16), winning three Superbowls in that same period (a record shared only with the Dallas Cowboys).

Cheerleaders!

There's a ton of stuff, here's just a few.
Mini-helmets
Pat's Dog Jerseys
Pat's neon signs
Pat's hats (kinda funny, and I agree)
Also check out ebay for cheap stuff.

This happened way back in 2007. Of course I've heard about this cheating scandal, but I've never really looked into it. There's no way I can know the whole truth about this stuff as I'm a newbie, so these were just the surface reports.

New England was caught videotaping opposing teams' defensive signals, which is against the league rules, and they were already suspect before that. Not everyone was convinced it made a big difference, as they believed coaching and player talent has way more impact.

There were also reports that Belichick had microphones hidden in players shoulder pads to hear the other teams' offensive audibles. Also, he was supposedly stealing playbooks. To make matters worse, he wasn't answering questions and tried to play it off as a misunderstanding. What!?This kind of behavior was hoped not to be the "norm" in the industry.

Belichick was fined $500,000, the Patriots fined $250,000, and they lost a first round draft choice in 2008. But even in February 08, Belichick was pleading ignorance on verbal technicalities (sounds like a politician). So I don't know, that's the latest article I found. It sounds to me like he was flat out cheating, but I don't know what or how much of this is true. I also got the impression that this controversy has kind of dropped. I'm a little confused on what wound up happening. As an outsider, this seems like kind of a big deal to me. If he was caught cheating red-handed, how does he still keep his job?