This is a breaking story. The right wing Boston Herald says the coach should accept the “honor.” The liberal Boston Globe is not surprising on the other side. But Bill call is what matters and he has elected not to receive. I don’t know how much this was his decision, or how much pressure came from above from the top management worried about the Patriot’s brand, not to mention their cash flow. Perhaps even the Commissioner did some arm twisting on this.
In all due respect to one of the great coaches in NFL history, what has he ever done to advance human freedom? But that same question could be asked about everybody else who has received the medal from Trump. All at best have done nothing to advance freedom, and at worse have fought against freedom. I assume if Bill had elected to receive, he’d at least have not used the apearance to claim that the Super Bowl had been stolen from his team, and demand that the Commissioner remedy the situation. (But maybe Trump would have made the claim, and called for Patriots, both small p and capital P to storm Tampa Bay come February to Stop the Steal.
It’s all over the place, so I’m not even going to link to the first stories, but rather to the only article I could find not behind a paywall of the now breaking story where Belichick confirms he is not going to accept and does not sugar coat the reason. Here is the story from the ESPN site.
Thank you Bill for doing to right thing, If you hadn’t, your team would have lost my allegiance.