Concern Troll Arlen Spector is at it again. Three days before the Super Bowl, the Pennsylvania Republican announced that he intends to look into why the NFL ordered the destruction of the so-called "spygate" tapes.
Curiously, Spector has either been silent or continued his long pattern of pretending to chastise the Bush Adminstration before he ends up voting with them in lock step. Moreover, the timing of his announcement was suspect as the Senate is debating Telecom immunity and extending FISA. There is also the matter of the destroyed CIA interogation tapes, but somehow Spector is more interested in much to do about nothing:spygate.
DISCLOSURE: I am BOTH a Giants and Patriots fan. How is that possible? I am life long Giants fan who lives in New England. When I moved here, Parcells had just been hired by the Pats and they had a number of former Giants players and coaches at the time.
Someone could legitimately accuse me of being self-interested, but I win even if the Pats lose because I was lucky enough for both of my teams to reach the Super Bowl.
IMO Spygate is a made-up scandal. Sure Don Shula acts as if he never bent or broke any rules as NFL coach. He's a hypocrite. Remember the 1982 AFC Championship?
Most people don't, but here's a quick primer. The Dolphins, as host of the game, were required to have a tarpelin covering the playing field for 48 hours prior to the game. Well, Shula reasoned that not doing so would give the Dolphins a huge advantage in the rainy, muddy conditions as Miami had a huge straight ahead runner Aundra Franklin while the Jets depended on cutback runner Freeman McNeil.
Did Shula lose any draft choices? No. Why not? He was on the NFL competition committe and constantly tweaked league rules to benefit his teams.
Can Shula with his sanctimonous "I never cheated" attitude be believed? If you ask Jimmy Johnson the answer is no. Johnson is a former coach who believes that the Patriots didn't do anything wrong and the practice is widespread in the NFL. Moreover, he doesn't think that it gave them any advantage in the game.
I wouldn't call what the Pats did as cheating. IMO cheating is doping. Cheating is paying off a scoreboard clock operator or a game official or a player to perform below expectations or to favor one team with calls. What the Pats did is no different from a baserunner stealing signs from a catcher. Does it give you an advantage to know what is coming next? Yes, but you still have to hit the ball.
Fifty years after the then NY Giants beat the Brookyln Dodgers in a playoff series after they once were 15 games out in August, accusations that the Giants had stolen signs from other teams surfaced.
I didn't believe the stories, but if so, I was skeptical that it helped the Giants in any way because the supposed location where the sign stealing took place was from a window in the centerfield clubhouse at the Polo Grounds located around 500 feet from home plate. Signals were relayed via a telephone and to someone who relayed them to the hitter. Sounds far fetched, but sometimes people will come up with any reason to bash a team they hate.
Getting back to Spector. Given the lawlessness of the Bush Administration with torture, domestic spying, obstruction of justice to name a few, the NFL Spygate hearings make the spectacles that were Terry Schiavo, Gay Marriage, and Flag Burning seem like legitimate issues.
Some people will say that the steroid hearings this month are not legitimate. I disagree. Since they pertain to controlled substance use that is against federal law, it falls under the legitimate control of Congress, regardless of whether lawmakers use the hearings to grandstand.
The Spygate scandal is a joke. If anything, the NFL pissed the Patriots off so much that they decided to just take out their frustrations on their opponents all year long. It also asks the question that perhaps the Pats did nothing wrong at all but the NFL decided to punish them first because they knew other teams were doing it too.
While I am very curious as to why the tapes were destroyed and what was actually on them, I don't think that this deserves to be a federal case so to speak. Moreover, given how various members of the adminstration have admittedly broken a number of federal laws but continue to refuse to even appear before Congress, it makes no sense to make NFL commisioner Roger Goodell explain himself on a mater that is legal and completely outside the scope of what Congress is actually supposed to oversee.