PENALTIES FOR SPYING

There was a lot of turmoil in the National Football League during the past week because of charges made by the New York Jets that the New England Patriots were using video cameras to steal defensive signals. The NFL seized cameras and confirmed the charges. It is uncertain how long the recent Super Bowl Champions have been doing this, but a couple years ago the Green Bay Packers complained about a similar offense when the Patriots visited historic Lambeau Field. The result of this entire fiasco was fines being leveled totalling $750,000 and draft choices being taken away. Serious stuff.

However, the international Formula One racing system has had similar problems. Charges had been made that Team McClaren Mercedes had spied on Team Ferrari and obtained engineering data on 2007 and 2008 model-year racing cars. The FIA , Formula One's governing body began investigating the charges. However, when two time world-champion driver Fernando Alonso (pictured here) current McClaren driver, reported he had the incriminating evidence on his laptop, the FIA came down with penalties on Thursday of this week which make the NFL's sanctions seem like peanuts.

In addition to eliminating McClaren Mercedes from the Constructor's Championship competition this year they fined them $100 million dollars! Yes, that's $100,000,000.00 !!! Certainly not chump-change by any measure.

Sports has turned into such a huge economic investment that some participants have turned to their own version of industrial espionage to attempt to maximize return on investment. In the overall scope of what should truly be important, our priorities are getting totally out of hand.