Spying on Americans, OK -- spying in NFL, bad
Posted: Friday, February 15, 2008 7:11 AM
Far be it from me to suggest that a U.S. Senator could be influenced by such petty concerns as money. But if you’re scratching your head trying to figure out why Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican, is so interested in the NFL’s Spygate scandal, you could – just for fun – follow the money.
In this case, run over to Specter’s list of campaign contributions accounting at opensecrets.org. Number two on the list, with $100,100 is the cable giant Comcast Corp. Number one, with $197,500, is Blank Rome, a law firm that represents Comcast.
By sheer coincidence, Comcast is one of the cable companies at war with the NFL over the league’s NFL Network. The NFL wants cable companies to carry it as part of the basic package. Comcast, among others, wants to charge for the service. The bottom line here is that a lot of fans don’t get the NFL Network.
A true representative of the people would try to get the two entities together, because that’s best for his constituents. But there’s Specter doing everything he can to tell NFL commissioner Roger Goodell how to run his league and threatening to inflict an act of Congress on him.
Rather than launch into a rant about this bald show of favoritism, but it’s already been done far better than I could over at The Philadelphia Daily News’ attitude.com blog, written by Will Bunch. His conclusion is:
“Specter's interest in this issue dovetails far too closely with those of his two largest contributors, whose employees have given his campaign more than half a million dollars to keep him in office. I believe if there's any Senate hearing involving the NFL and Arlen Specter, it ought to be the Senate Ethics Committee, looking at a potential link to these donors.”
On Wednesday, Specter had Goodell down to Washington to talk about Spygate. Afterwards, he said that the commissioner told him that Bill Belichick and the Pats have been spying since 2000, when he was named head coach. Specter expressed outrage that Goodell had destroyed all tapes from New England that might support that contention.
Belichick supposedly told Goodell he didn’t think he was doing anything illegal. It’s a moot point. Goodell has punished Belichick and the Pats to the tune of $750,000 and a first-round draft choice, the heaviest fine ever levied. He’s the league’s boss, and it was his call.
And if the Pats were spying since 2000, what does Specter suggest Goodell do? Forfeit three Super Bowls? Forfeit all wins? Repay all receipts? Stand on the steps of the Capitol in sackcloth and ashes with a sign around his neck saying, “I was naughty?”
This isn’t the NCAA. There is no “death penalty” rule, and there is no provision for forfeiting titles and wins. It’s the same in every professional sport, and with good reason. If you stripped the title from every team that ever cheated in any way, you’d have damned few champions.
Penalize the Pats for something they did eight years ago, and you’d better trot on over to Major League Baseball’s offices and demand that the 1951 Giants forfeit their NL pennant because they stole signs from the centerfield scoreboard. Then run down all the other cheaters from ball-scuffers to steroid cheats.
Some of us may find it execrable, but the rule in pro sports is it isn’t cheating if you don’t get caught. And you can’t go back and penalize people for things they did in seasons that are already in the books.
Shame on the Patriots if that’s what they did, but what’s done is done. End of story.
Only Congress can reverse history like that. Specter’s one of the champions of fairness who wants to fix it so that the President, Vice President and telecoms will be immune from prosecution for spying on citizens illegally. In other words, cheaters will be cleared after the fact of their cheating.
That’s fine with Specter, because it involves only a violation of the civil liberties of ordinary Americans who don’t contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign funds. The NFL, on the other hand, is messing with the profit margin of the folks stuffing his coffers.
And that, my fellow Americans, is your tax dollars at work.
