Video-gate: is this for real?

Okay, I've had a little time to get away today-- the family and I all went down to my mom and dad's house in Murfreesboro for a little early celebration of my Dad's birthday.
The weather's cooler and it's really enjoyable to be outside these days, so we had a great afternoon out in the back yard, eating some pizza and some really good carrot cake (courtesy of my lovely, talented sister)...

So now I'm back home, watching the last few minutes of the New England-San Diego ballgame-- the Sunday Night Football matchup this week-- and of course, all the talk is about the Belichick Videotape scandal. I mean, there are some people who are really coming down on the Pats and Belichick. There's clearly some kind of Patriots-dynasty back-lash at work here. People are sick of the Patriots success (still hard to believe for those of us who remember all too clearly the decades of futility the Pats suffered through before 2001) and are seeming to revel in this recent fall from grace. More than that-- they're venomous, calling for the Commissioner to take draft picks, impose fines, and to suspend Belichick for as long as a year. I even heard one caller to a local show propose that the Pats should lose two home games next year.

All this seems to go a bit far.

I've not really had a chance to talk about this-- and I'm sure this will reflect poorly on my character to someone-- but I've got to wonder:
What's all the big deal about?

Okay, so now before anyone starts screaming at me-- you support cheating? Balco! Balco!-- let me explain a little.

1) if coaches don't assume that they're being watched, why do they cover their mouths with their play sheets? Heck, even coaches up in the box have been known to hide their mouths while they're talking.
2) if they don't assume they're being watched or that the opposing team is trying to steal their signals, then why do they have three or four different guys sending in the signals to the defense?

With all that subterfuge on the field, I guess I just assumed that teams were probably filming each other like crazy. At a minimum, I would have figured there'd be a few lipreader 'staff' stationed in the press box, armed with high-powered binoculars trained on various members of the opposing team coaching staff.

I mean, why not?