As the New England Patriots prepare for their first full season since the Spygate scandal broke, the Patriots aren’t thinking about the Spygate scandal at all.

Or so they say.

“I could care less about it,” guard Stephen Neal told the Associated Press.  “It didn’t affect me in the least then and it still doesn’t.”

“There are a lot of new guys who weren’t a part of that, so they don’t bring any of those memories or that energy in here,” quarterback Tom Brady said last month.  ”In life, you don’t reflect too much on what happened in the past.  You try to learn from it and build on it.”

But the franchise realizes that not everyone outside the organization will be willing or able to move forward.

“Our fans, I think, they will be in our corner,” owner Robert Kraft told the AP.  “For people who we either beat their teams or have some ax to grind, I don’t know.”

We know.  Those folks will continue to revel in the incident that continues to be one of the most polarizing issues that we ever can remember, in any sport.

Still, with issues like the Brett Favre fiasco and the Packers-Vikings tampering war and Ocho Stinko and players getting arrested left and right, Spygate is fading into memory, for those who aren’t inclined to continuously use the issue to chip away at the most successful NFL franchise of the salary-cap era.