Congratulations are in order to the World Champion New York Giants, who played and won a hard-fought Super Bowl 42.
Now that that’s out of the way, I am very bitter about the outcome of what should be considered one of the greatest championship football games of all time. Football is a game of routine. When routines are altered at the last minute, bad things have happened.
For those of you out there who are real football fans, let’s not forget Atlanta’s
Eugene Robinson, who was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in Miami the night before Super Bowl 33. One can’t say that was not a distraction to Robinson (a married man), or the team. The Denver Broncos subsequently blew out the Falcons 34-19.
“But were they more than two touchdowns better? The Falcons say no, and privately they pointed to several distractions in addition to Robinson's arrest.”
With that, I’m still disgusted as I was all morning Sunday, watching Senator Arlen Specter explain that the only reason the whole Spygate issue resurrected was because a New York Times reporter brought up the subject. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, instead of promoting the big game, was
defending the investigation he closed (and heavily fined the Patriots for) four months ago.
Specter, interviewed on a special Sunday morning edition of ESPN’s
Mike & Mike, said that he was concerned about the integrity of the game, as people legally bet on the game. I find it amusing how the United States Senate, now attempting to load up the stimulus bill with
earmarks for their own districts, is now interested in “integrity”.
The Pennsylvania senator also issued a veiled threat about the league’s
anti-trust exemption as a reason for the Senate’s possible interest and involvement. Specter claimed concern that the Patriots’ victory over the St. Louis Cardinals may have been tainted by the reports that they videotaped St. Louis’ pregame “walk-throughs”.
This is one of the reasons the United States Senate has no business getting involved here. As I’ve written many times before, just because you get elected to a political office, doesn’t automatically mean that politician is an expert about anything.
During the baseball steroid hearings, congresspersons repeatedly mispronounced the names of famous baseball players, illustrating their sheer ignorance of what they were investigating. Yesterday on Mike & Mike’s show, Arlen Specter referred to the 2001 St. Louis Rams as the “Cardinals”. In 1988, the St. Louis Cardinals moved to Tempe, Arizona, becoming the Arizona Cardinals. And Specter wants to lead a football investigation.
During my Super Sunday morning of sheer anger, I was hoping the resurrection of Spygate would be yet another inspirational, motivation tool the Patriots would use, as they did when the whole scandal developed back after Week One of this season. The problem is there shouldn’t have been any distractions interjected by a New York newspaper (that loves becoming part of the story) and a United States senator.
It will be very interesting to see what happens from here.
Should Specter lead Spygate hearings with senators who think illegal procedure is a parliamentary miscue, can he make the case the Patriots’ cheating made them better, especially after losing Super Bowl 42? As the Patriots have lost the big one, will Specter decide to drop the matter? That would sure stink of revenge on his part, seeing how he claims to represent his Philadelphia Eagle fan constituents.
All of the New York media would be screaming bloody murder if some last-minute distraction were interjected by a local newspaper, out of the blue, along with an enabling, attention-starved United States senator.
While acknowledging the grand efforts of the New York Giants during Super Bowl 42, I would have nothing to say if the New York Times and Arlen Specter hadn’t decided to be the story two days before the what was potentially the most historic game in NFL history.
ESPN’s Mike Greenberg told Mike Golic that the emails coming in Super Sunday morning were almost totally against Specter.
I’ve only gotten started….
