You really, really don't seem to understand what Spygate was, so let me just clarify a bit.
Fact #1 -- stealing signals of various types has ALWAYS been in the NFL. I'm not saying all teams do it, but lots of teams/coaches do and did. The traditional method, of course, is either keeping an eye on the other guys signals and trying to decipher them, or getting players from the former team (sometimes JUST before you play them) and having them tell you what those signals mean. This is PERFECTLY LEGAL AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN.
Fact #2 -- videotaping by opposing teams under most circumstances has also been perfectly legal for years and years. The tricky part is taping SIGNALS. Ok. That was ALSO widely done, and universally ignored.
How do I know? Because Jimmy Johnson knew all about it. He DID it. He learned about it from who? Marty Schottenheimer's Kansas City Chiefs!
Fact #3 -- The real problem for Belichick and the Patriots wasn't that they filmed signals in 2001, or 2003, or 2004, it's that the NFL came out with a relatively clear (to most people but apparently not Belichick) memo in 2006 which made it clear that videotaping signals was not permitted
And then BB ignored that rule, for reasons that don't make much sense.
But note the timing of it. September, 2006. If the Patriots had stopped then, the NFL would never have cared about any prior taping, by them or any other team that did it.
Note also the absurdity of the rule. It's ok to steal signals in some ways, but not others?
As the New York Times pointed out:
And yeah, I know, tl;dr, but you can rant on and on about cheating and asterisks, but honestly, it's absurd and doesn't phase me a bit. Once you properly understand the "scandal" and put everythign in context, it's pretty damn clear that it's really a big hullaballoo over not much at all.
Or, as Bill Cowher (who the Patriots beat not once but TWICE on the way to Super Bowls):
http://espn.go.com/blog/pittsburgh-s...act-of-spygate