When Bill Belichick ran off the field without shaking hands with winning Giants coach Tom Coughlin after losing the Super Bowl in the last minute of the season, it's because, like a dying man, he saw his whole life passing in front of his eyes.

He remembered every evil, cheating thing he ever did and he knew that the chickens were now coming home to roost to pay him back for all his nefarious behavior.

He knows what he did, all the taping of opposing teams' defensive signals going back to since he started with the Patriots in 2000, taping opposing teams' practice sessions, probably bugging their locker rooms, bribing refs, paying hookers to knock on opposing players' hotel rooms the night before games, etc.  With all the high-stakes gambling that goes on, he probably used the inside information that he had to bet games and rake in thousands or millions of bucks like disgraced crooked NBA ref Tim Donaghy.

He almost got away with it.  NFL commissioner Roger Goodell already rolled over for him once, destroying the evidence when he got caught taping Jets' signals.  If Belichick would have succeeded in achieving a perfect season and the Super Bowl, his celebrity would have made him untouchable.  Nothing succeeds like success.  He would have achieved what disgraced President Nixon was shooting for - unlimited power.  Like Nixon, he overreached and got caught up in a disgraceful mess of his own contrivance.

Like Nixon getting defeated by the determined efforts of a couple of young people, Woodward and Bernstein, Goodell was undone by the determined efforts of a young Giant team led by neophyte quarterback Eli Manning.  These Giants saved football from a fascist dictatorship run by Belichick who, if he had been able to achieve unlimited power, would have turned the NFL into a gangster empire run exclusively for his benefit.  He definitely would have had a cultural influence on the larger world, corrupted as it already is by the abuses of power perpetrated by the Bush administration, which seized power in a stolen election and used it to empty out the economy into the pockets of his supporters.

But when Plaxico Buress caught the final touchdown pass in the last seconds of the Super Bowl, Belichick knew that he would not have the power to stop all the investigations that would inevitably close in on him.  He knew that he was washed up, and that his career was at an ignominious end.

This writer immediately knew it as well.  Right after that game, I predicted that Belichick was washed up and that he would not be returning with the Patriots next autumn.  I am sticking by that prediction.  Belichick is through.  He will be lucky to avoid going on trial for massive cheating like the NBA ref, Donaghy.

Remember, you heard it here first.