Rehashing Spygate on Capitol Hill
Senator reminds NFL that politics can be a contact sport too.
Feb. 1, 2008— -- While the New England Patriots pursues its historic 19-0 season into the 2008 Super Bowl in Arizona Sunday, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is stuck in Jacksonville in 2005.
It's the fourth quarter of the 2005 Super Bowl, and his Philadelphia Eagles are mounting an exciting end-of-game comeback. But the team's quarterback, Donovan McNabb, is so sick he can barely call the plays. The game ends 24-21 in favor of the Patriots.
Specter is not the only Eagles fan to relive that game since the Patriots were caught stealing signals from the New York Jets earlier this season. A whole conspiracy theory has sprung up.
And while the team from New England is set to appear in another Super Bowl, the Eagles' season is over. What's worse, the Patriots square off Sunday against the New York Giants. And Specter roots, he said today, for four teams during football season -- "the Eagles, the Steelers, whoever plays the Cowboys, and whoever plays the Giants.
Twice this season, Specter has written to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell asking about the Patriots and spygate. The first letter was in November, when the Patriots were gearing up to play the Eagles for the first time since 2005. Then he wrote again in December, when he heard that the spy tapes the Patriots made had been destroyed.
But no response came until Thursday, after the senator had talked to a New York Times reporter.
So Specter did what self-respecting senators do when they want to get something off their chests. He called a press conference -- two days before the Super Bowl -- to raise some Cain about the NFL.
Railing against the NFL's decision to destroy the tapes, Specter questioned Goodell's claim that he'd only just received the letters this week. Specter also tied the spygate scandal to the NFL's exemption from antitrust laws, a status he said allows the NFL to control the football market in a way that would be illegal in any other industry.
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