At issue is a charge by the New York Jets that when they were opposing the New England Patriots last week, the Patriots had a cameraman videotaping Jets coaches signaling in defensive alignments.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick Wednesday issued an apology concerning the matter, but Belichick deferred any other comment until after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has completed an investigation. Should Goodell find that the Patriots have acted improperly, the club could be disciplined by being fined, being stripped of draft choices, or both. For Belichick, a suspension is a possibility.

The advantages of being aware of how a team is planning to set its defense for a particular play were pointed out by Tom Bass, a former defensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Bucs and the San Diego Chargers and the author of four books dealing with football.

"If the other team wasn't prepared for it, it could be a great advantage," said Bass. "If you know the team is blitzing, you put in maximum protection and you go deep with the ball as long as you can convey this to your quarterback."

Since NFL quarterbacks have radios in their headgears, advising them of how the defense was preparing to align would not be difficult.

Bass said most NFL teams act to prevent their defensive schemes from being pilfered.

"If you're a smart defensive coordinator, you don't call the defensive signal until only about 15 seconds are left on the clock," Bass said. When he was coordinating the Bucs' defenses, Bass recalled, one of the team's rivals had an individual who was "supposedly a genius" at stealing signals.

The Bucs' response, Bass said, was to install a system in which on first down, his defense would accept the first sign he had wig-wagged in, on second down it would orchestrate the second sign he had sent in, and on third down it would set up in the third sign he had chosen.

"It's all a big game," Bass said of "the secret world" in the NFL. The phrase is novelist John le Carre's. His reference was not to the NFL - le Carre's works deal with the affairs of state - but it might have been.

Many NFL coaches have been notably paranoid. None was more so than the late Sid Gillman when he was coaching the Chargers. Sir Sidney could not rid himself of the fear that Al Davis was spying on him.

"When we were quartered at Sunset Park in La Mesa and a plane would fly over, Sid would want to get the number on the plane's wings and call the FAA," Bass said. "I felt that the thing we should have done was to send our playbook to an opponent. They would have gone nuts in a week trying to figure that out."

According to Bass, when Gillman's squads would be playing out of town, somebody on the Chargers would leave a report on the locker room floor.

"The locker room guy, whoever cleaned up, would find it and give it to the home team's coach," Bass said.

The report would be a fiction.

Don Coryell was another Chargers coach who saw persons desirous of learning the team's schemes lurking everywhere. From high in an office building adjoining where the team practiced across the parking lot from Qualcomm Stadium, a person could have viewed what the club was doing during its preparations. This made Coryell uncomfortable.

As Bass related, Coryell's unease might have had its source in what occurred when he was coaching at Whittier. A quarterback who identified himself as a former Marine was a candidate for Coryell's squad. Before Whittier's first game, the quarterback advised Coryell that his mother was ill and asked to be excused.

On game day, Coryell looked across the field. The man who had been working with his squad was an assistant coach for the other school.

"That would really get you," Bass said.

There are no documented instances of spying in the NFL, which has not made coaches any more secure. When Harland Svare was coaching the Chargers in a game against the Raiders in Oakland, he looked up at the ceiling of his team's dressing quarters and shouted, "Damn you, Al Davis, I know you're up there!"

The late San Diego Union sports editor Jack Murphy made Svare's cry the title of a book. Davis, eyes twinkling, by Murphy's account, would say only, "I'll tell you this: The thing wasn't in the light fixture."

The late George Allen was another coach who was mindful of spying. When Allen was handling the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, he employed a "super security guard." He was Ed Boynton, a retired cop from Long Beach. Boynton became known to writers as "Double O."

In another time, little occurred in the NFL of which Davis was not aware. In a book he did on Davis, "Just Win, Baby," San Francisco writer Glenn Dickey relates that in his first audience with Davis, Davis gestured toward file cabinets in his office that he said contained information on every player in the league.

"If we learn that we can trust you, I'll let you see those files," Dickey said he was informed. He never did see the files.

One more thing: The Patriots defeated the Jets on Sunday, 38-14.

Visit Copley News Service at www.copleynews.com.