What’s the sound made by one hand clapping? Probably the same as the one generated by the majority of football fans over Sen. Arlen Specter’s continued grandstanding on the so-called Spygate matter.
This past week, golf pro Matt Walsh, the former videographer for the New England Patriots, emerged from his Hawaiian hideway to spill whatever beans were left to spill about his taping escapades to, in order, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Specter, the New York Times and HBO. Next week, he’s due to meet with Virgil, the maintenance man in my building.
Of course, Walsh didn’t really have anything new to say, except that he unwittingly made the Boston Globe look even more foolish (no small feat) by denying that the Patriots had secretly taped the St. Louis Rams’ pre-Super Bowl walk-through. In short order, he did confirm what had already been known and offered his thoughts on the ethics of it all after, of course, compromising his own by repeatedly taking money from the Patriots for something he says he knew was wrong at the time.
The lack of anything new didn’t stop Specter from continuing his overblown rhetoric on the subject, again invoking the notion of revisiting the NFL’s antitrust exemption, a cage Specter has rattled before. He wants an independent investigation, a congressional inquiry and, perhaps, a public flogging. He reserved judgment on what action to take next depending on the reaction of the fans. What’s the proper senatorial reaction to a yawn?
The strong guess is that if Goodell had to do this all over again, he would have conducted a more thorough inquiry the first time around and, for good measure, hung on to the evidence, if only to appease the conspiracy nuts. The fact that he didn’t only gave blowhards like Specter and a handful of New York Jets fans ammunition they didn’t need or deserve.
But that issue aside, lost in all the bluster is perspective. Taping a coach’s signals may be against the NFL operating manual, but on the scale of infractions, it trends far more toward driving 85 in a 65 MPH zone than it does armed robbery. In political terms that Specter can understand, it’s more akin to letting your feet wander in an airport bathroom stall than it is to lying to Congress about why you fired certain U.S. attorneys.
Even more to the point: what exactly is the purpose of Specter’s ongoing interest? The salient facts are known. The Patriots were punished, head coach Bill Belichick was fined. If some like Specter aren’t satisfied with the level of the punishment, personally I wasn’t happy with the way Specter didn’t make former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testify under oath to explain illegal wiretapping, but you don’t hear me continuing to bitch about it.
The saber rattling against the NFL by Specter is really nothing new and really has a deeper purpose. For context, remember the whole Philadelphia Eagles/Terrell Ownes mess? Specter stuck his nose into that as well, calling the Eagles vindictive after it sent Owens home for the rest of the season for basically placing the team under the bus and driving it over them himself. At that time, Specter too threatened to hold hearings on the NFL’s antitrust exemption. Over Owens? That should have been the tipoff.
On the surface, the Ownes situation and now Spygate make Specter seem like an overly obnoxious fan with a bit of a God complex. But if you look just below the surface, the real issue for Specter in Spygate and, for that matter, the Owens case, revolves around the NFL’s antitrust exemption and how it is negatively impacting one of his biggest campaign contributors, Pennsylvania-based Comcast.
Comcast, like a lot of cable operators wasn’t too happy when the NFL decided to re-up with DirecTV a few years ago instead of allowing cable systems to bid on the package. But things got far more interesting when the NFL Network rolled around. The reason the most of the country doesn’t get the NFL Network, at least on basic digital cable, has to do with some arguably poor marketing decisions by the NFL. When the NFL put up a package of eight late-season games for auction and then awarded the package to its own NFL Network, Comcast was fit to be tied, I tell ya because its Versus network was a bidder as well. In retaliation, Comcast moved the NFL Network from the basic digital tier to a sports tier available to subscribers for an additional fee. This, in turn, infuriated the NFL, and the parties are in a cold war over it, with the NFL filing a complaint against Comcast before the Federal Communications Commission. Meanwhile, the NFL Network is frozen out on most cable systems.
It’s always dangerous ground when taking sides in a fight between multi-billion dollar entities. Let’s just say that neither side is as innocent as it claims and neither is on the side of the fans, only the money. But these are big boys and they can settle their own disputes and don’t need Specter, doing Comcast’s bidding, getting in the middle of the food fight.
What Specter and his benefactor Comcast really want is the removal of the antitrust exemption. This would then make it illegal for the NFL to pool its broadcasting rights and bargain with the various networks, thus allowing operators like Comcast a real opportunity to bid for local broadcast rights in several markets. The NFL, for obvious reasons, likes things just the way they are. Indeed, the antitrust exemption is at the heart of the league-wide revenue sharing scheme that has benefited both the individual owners and the league for years.
Specter has been mostly an able legislator throughout his career, but his fight with the NFL isn’t even principally based. To this point, Goodell has been mostly polite to Specter, taking the high road by not mentioning the Specter/Comcast relationship. But just like the Owens/Eagles mess, Goodell knows that Spygate will fade. What won’t, though, is the underlying issues between the NFL and cable systems like Comcast and Time Warner.
Goodell knows that the real secret to getting Specter off his back is to solve his problems with Comcast. But NFL commissioners are also rumored to have a bit of a God complex as well, thus further minimizing the chance that these problems will get resolved anytime soon. In the interim, fans better get used to every so often hearing again about Spygate, Son of Spygate, and whatever other –Gate Specter can invent. With the kind of money that’s really at stake, neither side is obviously interested in trying to win this battle with moderation.
Showing posts with label Arlen Specter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arlen Specter. Show all posts
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Friday, February 01, 2008
An Abuse of Power
There are any number of ways one might choose to conclude that the Super Bowl and all that comes with it has grown beyond surreal to out of control.
For some, the woman showing up at media day wearing a wedding dress and asking New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to marry her may have been the crowning moment. For others, it might have been the Britney Spears-like treatment that the media gave to Brady’s allegedly injured ankle over several days last week. But for me, it was when Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania decided to use the power of his senate office to avenge a grudge he still holds over the Philadelphia Eagles losing to the Patriots in the 2005 game.
The New York Times broke the story on Friday that Specter wants NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, to explain the so-called “spygate” incident. What Specter really wants to know is whether or not the reason his beloved Eagles lost the 2005 Super Bowl to the Patriots was because of any spying during the game. A more obvious explanation for the loss might be the Eagles four turnovers in the game, but some relationship to “spygate” makes for better grandstanding by a disgruntled public official.
Specter wrote Goodell back in November merely asking that he be advised if anything in his investigation of the Patriots showed that they were stealing the Eagles signals during the Super Bowl. It was a fair question that any fan might ask, but coming as it did on officialSenate letterhead was intended to make it appear as though “spygate” was now a federal matter.
But by asking the question as he did, Specter displayed his overall ignorance of the underlying scandal. Putting aside for the moment whether or not stealing signals in a football game is an issue that should ever show up on the radar screen of a U.S. Senator, the Patriots weren’t accused of stealing the New York Jets signals during the game for use in that game. Instead, what they were doing was taping the signals the defensive coach made and then the play that immediately followed for possible use in future games. To the extent it’s even useful to do this, which is highly questionable, it is more so against a division rival that you play twice a season.
Even more to the point, the signals that the Eagles defensive coaches may have been making in the Super Bowl were on public display for everyone in Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville to see. Thus, even if the Patriots were gleaning something useful from the gyrations of an Eagles defensive coach on that day, it would hardly be stealing; more like observing.
Specter seemed a little annoyed that Goodell didn’t respond immediately to his annoying little missive and followed it up with another far more insidious misuse of his public office. In his second letter, Specter introduced the notion that Goodell’s destruction of the case file following the investigation was “suspicious” and that his punishment of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was “insufficient.” Just guessing here, but Specter probably never makes that claim had the Patriots been forced to forfeit the 2005 Super Bowl and the rings instead given to a team that didn’t earn them, such as the Eagles.
If this all seems a little goofy, hold on, it gets better. In the Times story, Specter actually upped the stakes even further when he said that Goodell’s destruction of the tapes was “analogous to the C.I.A. destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed.” If Specter actually said that with a straight face, then it’s clear he’s lost any perspective or credibility he may have once had, not to mention engaging in a wasteful use of taxpayer money.
Oh where to start? In the first place, the so-called records that were destroyed were not part of an on-going investigation but instead were the work product of a completed investigation. It would be different, I suppose, if the Patriots had destroyed the evidence instead of giving it to Goodell, but by all accounts that didn’t happen. Consequently, all Goodell did, basically, was close a case file upon completion of the task undertaken. In that context, Goodell’s actions are hardly unusual, let alone suspicious.
Further, there is no reason to not give Goodell the benefit of the doubt on why he decided to destroy the case file and all that went with it. As he noted in his response to Specter, he destroyed the tapes and other information that the Patriots had gathered and also had the Patriots certify that no other copies existed, in order to ensure that no competitive advantage could be obtained by the Patriots. In other words, the investigation was complete and no rational reason remained to hold on to the material. Destruction, as opposed to locking the material in a cabinet where it could later come up “missing,” seemed like a reasonable approach to concluding the matter.
Second, rather than tossing out wild accusations against Goodall, Specter is the one that should be challenged on why he thinks it’s even appropriate to compare an insignificant football issue with a serious issue like an on-going investigation into the CIA’s alleged destruction of tapes it made of potentially unlawful interrogation techniques it used on suspected terrorists. If Specter actually believes the two issues are at all on par, then the good folks of Pennsylvania ought to consider recalling Specter now. He’s obviously lost his mind.
To Goodell’s credit Goodell offered a response to Specter that was far more dignified than he deserved. In it he noted that nothing in the investigation revealed that the Patriots stole the Eagles signals during the Super Bowl. As Goodell worte, the only other time the two teams even played during this decade was a preseason game in 2003. Probably to Specter’s chagrin, Goodell stated the obvious when he said that there is no reason to believe that the outcome of the Super Bowl was at all affected by improper taping of the Eagles defensive signals.
This gets us back to the underlying seriousness of the offense. Belichick and the Patriots were rightly punished for violating a league rule against videotaping the opposing team’s sideline during a game. They had been warned previously, continued in the conduct and paid a pretty heavy fine.
But simply because the NFL has the rule doesn’t mean that the rule itself makes any sense. It is more than fair to suggest that the NFL’s rule about taping borders on the idiotic. Even though Belichick obviously felt it would give his team some sort of competitive advantage when playing the Jets down the road, it’s hard to imagine how and I’ve yet to hear a cogent explanation from anyone, including either Belichick or the NFL, on that point. Moreover, it’s not as if a team couldn’t accomplish the same thing anyway by having a member of its staff watch the opponent from across the field, jot down each and every arm gesture or hand movement of a coach and then write down the resulting play. Notably, there is no rule against that nor could there be since, again, all of it is taking place in very public view on every sideline of every stadium every week.
But the NFL is well within its right to establish even goofy rules and enforce them, which it did in this case. But all that doesn’t give someone like Specter the right to overstate the seriousness of the situation in order to assuage his hurt feelings, or that of his constituents, over the failure of their favorite team to win the Super Bowl.
The other salient point that Specter glosses over is that neither Goodell nor the NFL were hiding the material they collected from anyone or trying to stifle any other investigation. Though government agents torturing suspects raises significant legal issues, a paranoid coach taping the public display of an opposing team’s defensive signals raises no legal issues whatsoever.
“Spygate” was and always will be solely a league investigation of a league matter and wasn’t conducted, directly or indirectly, under any sort of Senate or Congressional oversight or mandate. More to the point, the league wasn’t under any legal obligation to even announce that it was undertaking the investigation, let alone under a legal obligation to keep copies of its investigation on the off chance that an equally paranoid senator still holding a grudge might be interested in it several months later. Thus, despite the haughty language used by Specter, there was no destruction of records of an active investigation but the destruction of evidence gathered to ensure it wouldn’t be further misused. It’s akin, actually, to destroying drugs confiscated during an arrest following the trial and conviction of the perpetrator. As a former prosecutor, surely Specter understands this difference.
There is a place, certainly, for governmental oversight of major business enterprises like the NFL or Major League Baseball, particularly where the integrity of the game is threatened. But there is a huge difference between players or officials who gamble and thus might be tempted to fix games, or players who use illegal performance enhancing drugs that can unfairly alter the outcome of the game, than stealing otherwise visible coaching signals on the sideline. If that threatened the integrity of any sport, then baseball is exhibit A where a team trying to steal another team’s hitting or pitching signals is not only not frowned upon, but an acceptable form of conduct.
It’s nice that Specter could find the time in his busy schedule to use the power of his office and the taxpayer-funded resources of the federal government to weigh in on “spygate” and bring Goodall before the Senate Judiciary Committee. After all, it’s not as if a tanking economy or a foreign war with no end in sight that is bankrupting the economy and killing thousands of Americans demands much of his attention.
For some, the woman showing up at media day wearing a wedding dress and asking New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to marry her may have been the crowning moment. For others, it might have been the Britney Spears-like treatment that the media gave to Brady’s allegedly injured ankle over several days last week. But for me, it was when Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania decided to use the power of his senate office to avenge a grudge he still holds over the Philadelphia Eagles losing to the Patriots in the 2005 game.
The New York Times broke the story on Friday that Specter wants NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, to explain the so-called “spygate” incident. What Specter really wants to know is whether or not the reason his beloved Eagles lost the 2005 Super Bowl to the Patriots was because of any spying during the game. A more obvious explanation for the loss might be the Eagles four turnovers in the game, but some relationship to “spygate” makes for better grandstanding by a disgruntled public official.
Specter wrote Goodell back in November merely asking that he be advised if anything in his investigation of the Patriots showed that they were stealing the Eagles signals during the Super Bowl. It was a fair question that any fan might ask, but coming as it did on officialSenate letterhead was intended to make it appear as though “spygate” was now a federal matter.
But by asking the question as he did, Specter displayed his overall ignorance of the underlying scandal. Putting aside for the moment whether or not stealing signals in a football game is an issue that should ever show up on the radar screen of a U.S. Senator, the Patriots weren’t accused of stealing the New York Jets signals during the game for use in that game. Instead, what they were doing was taping the signals the defensive coach made and then the play that immediately followed for possible use in future games. To the extent it’s even useful to do this, which is highly questionable, it is more so against a division rival that you play twice a season.
Even more to the point, the signals that the Eagles defensive coaches may have been making in the Super Bowl were on public display for everyone in Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville to see. Thus, even if the Patriots were gleaning something useful from the gyrations of an Eagles defensive coach on that day, it would hardly be stealing; more like observing.
Specter seemed a little annoyed that Goodell didn’t respond immediately to his annoying little missive and followed it up with another far more insidious misuse of his public office. In his second letter, Specter introduced the notion that Goodell’s destruction of the case file following the investigation was “suspicious” and that his punishment of Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was “insufficient.” Just guessing here, but Specter probably never makes that claim had the Patriots been forced to forfeit the 2005 Super Bowl and the rings instead given to a team that didn’t earn them, such as the Eagles.
If this all seems a little goofy, hold on, it gets better. In the Times story, Specter actually upped the stakes even further when he said that Goodell’s destruction of the tapes was “analogous to the C.I.A. destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed.” If Specter actually said that with a straight face, then it’s clear he’s lost any perspective or credibility he may have once had, not to mention engaging in a wasteful use of taxpayer money.
Oh where to start? In the first place, the so-called records that were destroyed were not part of an on-going investigation but instead were the work product of a completed investigation. It would be different, I suppose, if the Patriots had destroyed the evidence instead of giving it to Goodell, but by all accounts that didn’t happen. Consequently, all Goodell did, basically, was close a case file upon completion of the task undertaken. In that context, Goodell’s actions are hardly unusual, let alone suspicious.
Further, there is no reason to not give Goodell the benefit of the doubt on why he decided to destroy the case file and all that went with it. As he noted in his response to Specter, he destroyed the tapes and other information that the Patriots had gathered and also had the Patriots certify that no other copies existed, in order to ensure that no competitive advantage could be obtained by the Patriots. In other words, the investigation was complete and no rational reason remained to hold on to the material. Destruction, as opposed to locking the material in a cabinet where it could later come up “missing,” seemed like a reasonable approach to concluding the matter.
Second, rather than tossing out wild accusations against Goodall, Specter is the one that should be challenged on why he thinks it’s even appropriate to compare an insignificant football issue with a serious issue like an on-going investigation into the CIA’s alleged destruction of tapes it made of potentially unlawful interrogation techniques it used on suspected terrorists. If Specter actually believes the two issues are at all on par, then the good folks of Pennsylvania ought to consider recalling Specter now. He’s obviously lost his mind.
To Goodell’s credit Goodell offered a response to Specter that was far more dignified than he deserved. In it he noted that nothing in the investigation revealed that the Patriots stole the Eagles signals during the Super Bowl. As Goodell worte, the only other time the two teams even played during this decade was a preseason game in 2003. Probably to Specter’s chagrin, Goodell stated the obvious when he said that there is no reason to believe that the outcome of the Super Bowl was at all affected by improper taping of the Eagles defensive signals.
This gets us back to the underlying seriousness of the offense. Belichick and the Patriots were rightly punished for violating a league rule against videotaping the opposing team’s sideline during a game. They had been warned previously, continued in the conduct and paid a pretty heavy fine.
But simply because the NFL has the rule doesn’t mean that the rule itself makes any sense. It is more than fair to suggest that the NFL’s rule about taping borders on the idiotic. Even though Belichick obviously felt it would give his team some sort of competitive advantage when playing the Jets down the road, it’s hard to imagine how and I’ve yet to hear a cogent explanation from anyone, including either Belichick or the NFL, on that point. Moreover, it’s not as if a team couldn’t accomplish the same thing anyway by having a member of its staff watch the opponent from across the field, jot down each and every arm gesture or hand movement of a coach and then write down the resulting play. Notably, there is no rule against that nor could there be since, again, all of it is taking place in very public view on every sideline of every stadium every week.
But the NFL is well within its right to establish even goofy rules and enforce them, which it did in this case. But all that doesn’t give someone like Specter the right to overstate the seriousness of the situation in order to assuage his hurt feelings, or that of his constituents, over the failure of their favorite team to win the Super Bowl.
The other salient point that Specter glosses over is that neither Goodell nor the NFL were hiding the material they collected from anyone or trying to stifle any other investigation. Though government agents torturing suspects raises significant legal issues, a paranoid coach taping the public display of an opposing team’s defensive signals raises no legal issues whatsoever.
“Spygate” was and always will be solely a league investigation of a league matter and wasn’t conducted, directly or indirectly, under any sort of Senate or Congressional oversight or mandate. More to the point, the league wasn’t under any legal obligation to even announce that it was undertaking the investigation, let alone under a legal obligation to keep copies of its investigation on the off chance that an equally paranoid senator still holding a grudge might be interested in it several months later. Thus, despite the haughty language used by Specter, there was no destruction of records of an active investigation but the destruction of evidence gathered to ensure it wouldn’t be further misused. It’s akin, actually, to destroying drugs confiscated during an arrest following the trial and conviction of the perpetrator. As a former prosecutor, surely Specter understands this difference.
There is a place, certainly, for governmental oversight of major business enterprises like the NFL or Major League Baseball, particularly where the integrity of the game is threatened. But there is a huge difference between players or officials who gamble and thus might be tempted to fix games, or players who use illegal performance enhancing drugs that can unfairly alter the outcome of the game, than stealing otherwise visible coaching signals on the sideline. If that threatened the integrity of any sport, then baseball is exhibit A where a team trying to steal another team’s hitting or pitching signals is not only not frowned upon, but an acceptable form of conduct.
It’s nice that Specter could find the time in his busy schedule to use the power of his office and the taxpayer-funded resources of the federal government to weigh in on “spygate” and bring Goodall before the Senate Judiciary Committee. After all, it’s not as if a tanking economy or a foreign war with no end in sight that is bankrupting the economy and killing thousands of Americans demands much of his attention.
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