So now I guess Spygate's over, right? Finally, our long national ennui is done?
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| Roger Goodell loses some of his shine in this mess. (Getty Images) |
Bill Belichick's last word on the subject Sunday night on Your Favorite Network would seem to have finished it off, but a quick revue of who got taken out because of it may serve to remind us all that sometimes the manure pile everyone is diving into is still a manure pile. Starting with:
The Patriots
Belichick had other team's signals taped. The franchise was fined $250,000, and Belichick went down for twice that. His reputation as a square-shooter, never all that strong to begin with, takes a hit, and he looks like the kind of guy who isn't the genius he liked to play at being. The team looks small, too, which gnaws at Bobby Kraft more than it does anyone else.
Roger Goodell
The Great Lawgiver turns out to be just another tape-eradicating Enron accountant: "We saw, we reviewed, we destroyed the evidence. Nothing to see here. Move along. And buy a sweatshirt in the foyer on your way out." You don't get to be above the fray that way, Emperor Rog -- you just look like another CEO on the run. No wonder Arlen Specter thinks you're a weasel.
Arlen Specter
It isn't that this is a waste of the good senator's time; we don't know what else he wastes his time on. But between being an Eagles fan and a de facto Comcast lobbyist (Comcast being part of the NFL Network/cable spit fight), he looks like an opportunist, even though anything that makes the NFL use lawyers is, we can all agree, a good thing.
The 'Boston Herald'
'Nuff said here. Reporter John Tomase had to fall on a bunch of swords when the Super Bowl walk-through story turned out to be false/unprovable, and a lot of readers aren't going for it. The higher-ups have some 'splaining to do, too, especially if Kraft decides that there's some money to make in not being quite so magnanimous and sues. Now the paper either rolls over for the Patriots, or looks vindictive if it doesn't. Lousy place to be.
The rest of those who flogged this story into a thin gray paste
Because it's the Patriots, and more to the point, the NFL, this thing took on legs that it didn't really deserve, even when it was at its height. The breathless reportage was one part "we're on to something here" and three parts, "it's the NFL, and there's an audience segment that will watch it no matter how stupid it is. Plus, we get advertising. Plus, we fill air time. Plus, we can divert ourselves from the often tedious NFL Draft coverage. Plus, it takes a little of the breathless edge off the release of the schedule. Plus ..." oh, you get the point. The letters N, F and L now create a Pavlovian response in news organizations in a way that Yankees-Red Sox, Isiah Thomas, Roger Clemens, Celtics-Lakers and performance enhancing drugs can only hope to touch. Say the letters and listen for the seals at feeding time.
Cheating
Once again, we learn that America believes one thing above all others -- that it isn't cheating when your favorite team does it. There is no higher moral purpose being served here. Cheaters prosper until those being cheated rise up and fight back. It's all Darwinian, and the honor system is just another episode of Futurama by comparison. Patriots fans are just like USC fans, are just like Knicks fans, are just like 49ers fans, are just like ... and on and on and on. We have learned yet again that we stand for nothing because we'll stand for anything, and moral considerations are for suckers. A cheerful and uplifting tale, that.
But at least now we know what Spygate really means in the bigger picture. It is a mirror for a lot of different groups of people who, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, really ought to be ashamed of themselves.
