Spygate: What Arlen Specter Really Wants From NFL Owners and Roger Goodell

By: D.K. Wilson

Let’s see, how does this go? The New England Patriots at New York Giants football game is scheduled to be aired on the NFL Network only. However, because the Patriots are undefeated and this is the final opportunity for another team to defeat them during the regular season, there is a groundswell to have the game aired on some channel other than NFLN, which is only accessible to satellite television subscribers.Without warning, Senator Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) interjects himself into the situation and “formerly” challenges the NFL to air the game on another station.

Commissioner Roger Goodell acquiesces, and the game is aired on so many stations it saturates the airwaves.

There are issues between Goodell and cable companies. The NFLN is not a channel offered as part of cable television packages. Cable TV says the NFL is holding them ransom. The NFL says they cable companies want NFLN for a wing and a prayer.

Suddenly, on Feb. 1 of this year Specter announces that he has “had thoughts” about the NFL’s antitrust exemption for some time.” Translated, this means Specter is about to extract a pound of flesh from Goodell and the NFL owners because someone is whispering in Specter’s ear.

Specter uses what was originally called Videogate - the Patriots tapes of opponents’ defensive signals - as a reason to blurt out some nonsense about the integrity of the most gambled upon sport in America.

On Feb. 2 ESPN begins to use the more sensationalistic and malignant-sounding term “Spygate” to describe the Patriots’ taping of signals. At the same time ESPN.com’s Mike Fish writes an article about an ex-New England video assistant named Matt Walsh. Fish embarks on a long defense for Walsh, who by all accounts, is probably illegally in possession of Patriots videotapes.

Suddenly every ESPN football analyst is accusing the Patriots of cheating:

The truth is, we are in the midst of being subtly swayed into participating in a sensationalized event that has validity only if it is presented in context with each team and their attempts to circumvent the ethics and rules established within the NFL system. It was previously established that Tony Dungy was/is legendary for his sign-stealing practices. We know that Eric Mangini’s New York Jets asked for, but were denied videotaping allowances before a Jets-Patriots game in Foxboro during the 2006-07 season. Mangini ordered the videotaping to proceed despite the fact that his request was denied. His videotaper was busted and the tapes were taken. That incident might have been what was behind Mangini’s Week 1 complaint to the NFL about Belichick. It was said that the Green Bay Packers complained to the NFL about what they believed to be illegal videotaping by the Patriots last season. These incidents reveal a deeper pattern of cheating in the NFL; some unethical, some illegal by the NFL’s standards. It is a pattern that should be explored as a holistic treatment; without proper context, a single event is meaningless. And an undue focus on a single event challenges the veracity and motives of any investigator who chooses to embark down that path.

But here, we are being asked to suspend belief and act as if only one team, one person matters.

All of this happens - ironically - the day before the Super Bowl.

On Feb. 13, the same day Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee faced off in front of Congress, Goodell meets with Specter.

The following day Specter, the author of the “magic bullet theory” to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot President John F. Kennedy (and conversely ward off any thoughts of a conspiracy) announces that:

“We have a right to have honest football games.”

The notoriously anti-conspiracy Specter suddenly sees conspiracies around every corner and behind every door of everything that is the NFL - and, along with ESPN, asks us to see the grassy knoll videotapers he sees.

Two days later it is reported that special-teams player and reserve safety Willie Gary has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the New England Patriots Robert Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick for the alleged taping of practices before Super Bowl XXXVI:

The suit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans by attorney Eric Deters of Kentucky, according to the Boston Herald.

The Herald reported that the plaintiffs include Gary, a backup safety and special-teams player for the Rams; Peter Trout of St. Charles, Mo., the owner of two Rams seat licenses; and ticket holders Marcus Miller of Collinsville, Ill., and Kevin Hacker of Cincinnati.

According to the Herald, the lawsuit seeks $35 million in damages covering, among other things, the loss of Super Bowl rings, bonuses and endorsements for the $45 Rams players, and the cost of $400 tickets for the 72,922 fans at the game.

The Patriots are suspected of videotaping the St. Louis Rams walk-through of red zone plays the day before Super Bowl XXXVI. A play-by-play inspection of the game shows that even if the Rams’ walk-through was somehow taped, the knowledge gained from the tape had no bearing on the game’s outcome.

But here, Specter, Gary and all others who are proponents of this conspiracy theory are asking the public to believe that during most heavily scrutinized game - security-wise - in Super Bowl history (the result of the events of Sept. 11 the previous year), a Patriots lackey sauntered into or snuck into the Louisiana Superdome unnoticed and surreptitiously videotaped the Rams walk-through.

Sure. And one bullet caused seven different injuries to two men… I mean, there was more than one shooter at Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.

Between Feb. 16 or so and now Roger Goodell went before Congress and told that fine governing body that the cable companies are involved in discriminatory practices:

Commissioner Roger Goodell said the companies “enjoy a high level of bottleneck power” and treat the NFL Network in a “sharply different and clearly less favorable” way when compared with networks they own a stake in.

Goodell asked members on the House Energy and Commerce’s telecommunications subcommittee to pressure the Federal Communications Commission to enforce a law that bars discrimination against unaffiliated networks.

But Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said Goodell’s claims of discrimination were “a little hard to swallow” considering the league’s own antitrust exemption. She said the dispute is really about money.

Glenn Britt, president and chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said the NFL’s position was “especially disingenuous” considering the league’s exclusive arrangement with DirecTV Inc. to air the “NFL Sunday Ticket” package of out-of-market games.

The trend of exclusivity has grown recently, said Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the subcommittee chairman and a Boston Red Sox fan. He noted that baseball’s “Extra Innings” package was scheduled at first to air exclusively on DirecTV but ultimately was made available on cable systems.

The FCC has a process for resolving disputes between cable operators and programmers. But owners of independent networks have said the process is not used enough and is ineffective.

At the heart of the NFL Network dispute is the league’s preference that the network be carried on basic cable levels. Time Warner has refused to carry the NFL Network channel unless the channel is part of a higher-priced package. Comcast carries the channel on a premium level.

And it is here within this battle, that we come to see that there is something far deeper happening here than Specter’s want to see that America’s favorite sport remains uncorrupted. Just yesterday Specter challenged Goodell to make public the extensive exchange between the NFL and Walsh’s lawyers. Specter says the public will see that the NFL lawyers were attempting to subtly coerce Walsh into not going public.

This Monday morning radios show hosts around the U.S. are discussing this issue using terms like, they [the NFL] destroyed the tapes; it looks fishy. Senator Specter has every right to want to see the video tapes and to make the commissioner show the tapes to the nation.

How-ev-a.

There is more to Specter’s ruse than meets the eye - too bad mainstream sports journalists fail to see the obvious.

Specter’s number two source of campaign funds in recent years has been none other than employees of Comcast Corp. and their families, linked to at least $153,600 in donations going back as far as 1989. This is significant because Philadelphia-based Comcast has been engaged in a protracted war with the NFL over an issue that has nothing to do with New England and spying but is worth millions of dollars: Whether the cable giant can and should charge its consumers extra money to view the NFL Network.

And yet, there is even more to this sordid story.

Who is Specter’s number one source of campaign contributions? Hmmm, a law firm based in Philadelphia that is a monster Inside the Beltway lobbyist - Blank Rome LLC. Since 1989, partner and employees and family members from Blank Rome have donated $358, 483 to Specter’s coffers, which dwarfs all contributors - unless, of course, you are inclined to believe that Comcast funnels additional funds through Blank Rome.

And why do I write this?

Blank Rome’s largest lobbying client is ————— you guessed it, Comcast Corp. According to publicly available U.S. Senate disclosure records, Comcast has paid some $600,000 in fees to Blank Rome since 2004 to lobby Congress on a myriad of issues. But what issue is at the top of the list for Blank Rome? It is “a la carte pricing” for cable channels. This would be exactly what Comcast and the NFL Network are fighting over. Additionally, well-known Republican insider and former President Bush Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock, has been one of Blank Rome’s chief lobbyists on the Comcast account.

So, Specter’s number two donor and the lobbying client of his number one personal ATM machine, Comcast, is at odds with the owners of NFL teams and, by extension their representative, Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The owners feel Comcast and the other cable companies are attempting to exploit the NFL’s fan base by finding yet another way to extract dollars from consumers by calling the NFL Network a “sports tier” along the lines of sports packages that offer access to games throughout a season that the consumer cannot access through any local or nationally-televised method.

So, Specter’s real interest in Spygate just so happens to coincidentally coincide with the primary issue of his two largest contributors, whose employees have given his campaign more than half a million dollars to keep him in office.

Specter’s insistence on carrying out this ruse under the guise of an avid Philadelphia Eagles fan whose sole goal is to protect the integrity of the NFL on behalf of the public is a show of hubris on the level of Roger Clemens’ claims in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a nation of sports and baseball fans.

And we haven’t even touched on the waste of time, money, and resources Specter’s obfuscation has cost U.S. taxpayers.

If there is any Congressional or Senate hearing involving the NFL and Senator Arlen Specter, rather than “Spygate” the hearing should be held in front of the Senate Ethics Committee and involve perusing Specter’s communications looking for a potential link to the wishes of Comcast through Blank Rome.

Specter wants us all to fall for the theory that he is siding with the nation’s fans in standing up to the most powerful sports figure of the most powerful league in America; he is demanding accountability from Roger Goodell.

In reality, Arlen Specter wants us to fall for a conspiracy theory just like the one he sold the American public 45 years ago.

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D.K. Wilson is a freelance sports writer. He is better known on the internet as "DWil," and writes for Sports On My Mind.

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