http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08136/882040-66.stm?cmpid=steelers.xml

Only one thing can explain what this senator is pushing spygate to go on and on...Specter is a J-E-T-S fan lol!   Just a little humor in my head.  God I hope he doesnt get his wish and drag this out. 

 

*sigh*. I just wish he would let it go.  I dont agree with what happened, how it happened, the punishments, but its over and done with now.

There is just no sense in dragging this out.  Unless new evidence appears which I dont think is going to happen there is no sense rehasing the same thing over and over again.

 

It is obvious from the information gathered by Senator Specter that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is attempting to justify his punishment for 'SpyGate' as “just’, although additional information that has been released has shown additional information that goes far beyond videotaping defensive call signals from the 2007 Jets game.   

SpyGate will go away, if and only if, Roger Goodell adds some trivial additional punishment towards New England and all of their coaches involved in the cheating since 2000.  Until then, there will continued to be Anti-Trust Exemption rumblings along with the unseen asterisk next to all three New England Super Bowl trophies that were all attained through the method of cheating.  This will basically never go away and will always be a stain of the NFL of a team that was able to cheat the system into three Super Bowl wins and almost a perfect season and one more Super Bowl trophy.  The punishment is not fitting the crime and the fans of the NFL will never allow this subject to die.  Only additional punishment may help the rumblings to simmer down some, but it appears that Goodell is too close to Owner Kraft and too stubborn to admit his error in the original punishment of SpyGate by being far too light as it reflects on the total net result of the violations and gains of not following the NFL rule book. 

 

quoting SteelersSaint:

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It is obvious from the information gathered by Senator Specter that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is attempting to justify his punishment for 'SpyGate' as “just’, although additional information that has been released has shown additional information that goes far beyond videotaping defensive call signals from the 2007 Jets game.   

SpyGate will go away, if and only if, Roger Goodell adds some trivial additional punishment towards New England and all of their coaches involved in the cheating since 2000.  Until then, there will continued to be Anti-Trust Exemption rumblings along with the unseen asterisk next to all three New England Super Bowl trophies that were all attained through the method of cheating.  This will basically never go away and will always be a stain of the NFL of a team that was able to cheat the system into three Super Bowl wins and almost a perfect season and one more Super Bowl trophy.  The punishment is not fitting the crime and the fans of the NFL will never allow this subject to die.  Only additional punishment may help the rumblings to simmer down some, but it appears that Goodell is too close to Owner Kraft and too stubborn to admit his error in the original punishment of SpyGate by being far too light as it reflects on the total net result of the violations and gains of not following the NFL rule book. 

 

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The dealings with the patriots are over and done with, there is a possibility that specter will try to go after Goodell but I predict minimal results with that.  It may seem huge now, but when you think about bad publicity in the MLB I'd bet more people recall Pete Rose before they call up the blacksock scandal, this will last a while, but it'll fade.  Short final comment involving the punishment, the patriots could have been fined more, but the draft pick was a good punishment (not the NFL's fault the pats had 2 first rounders) and the fines to belichick were enough.  I already gave a few examples last night about fines in the NFL and the biggest one prior to spygate was 250,000 for Ray Lewis when he lied to police about the whole stabbing incident, so im pretty happy with the fine to bill.  It's all right ot be upset about it because we're all biased about this (Goodell included) and when emotions get this high about something theres no way everyone will walk away happy.

quoting Aasmith9149:

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The dealings with the patriots are over and done with, there is a possibility that specter will try to go after Goodell but I predict minimal results with that.  It may seem huge now, but when you think about bad publicity in the MLB I'd bet more people recall Pete Rose before they call up the blacksock scandal, this will last a while, but it'll fade.  Short final comment involving the punishment, the patriots could have been fined more, but the draft pick was a good punishment (not the NFL's fault the pats had 2 first rounders) and the fines to belichick were enough.  I already gave a few examples last night about fines in the NFL and the biggest one prior to spygate was 250,000 for Ray Lewis when he lied to police about the whole stabbing incident, so im pretty happy with the fine to bill.  It's all right ot be upset about it because we're all biased about this (Goodell included) and when emotions get this high about something theres no way everyone will walk away happy.

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I am completely confused as to how you can compare cheating the NFL rule book by one NFL team gaining three Super Bowl trophies and one almost perfect season with an additional Super Bowl trophy to what happened in the off season as to Ray Lewis's involvement into a double murder?  Ray Lewis is completely different as it is with Pete Rose gambling problems to an actual team in a sport having an unfair advantage of  winning.   The only thing you can compare “SpyGate” to is the Chicago “Black” Sox.  There a majority of a team got together in attempt to throw a World Series game(s).  Ray Lewis was somehow involved with two people being murdered and if not directly responsible, Ray Lewis knows who did it and would not cooperate with authorities.  The man makes me sick to see to this day, but it no way compares to cheating since 2000 and winning three Super Bowl trophies and almost one more.  “SpyGate” is huge and I do not ever see it going away in the sense New England will not be considered a cheater of three Super Bowls. 

The only thing I don't understand is WHY were the tapes destroyed? Because if they got totally busted for cheating it would destroy the integrity of the NFL? I don't buy it!! The people who cheated should all be punished. Because we may never find that out (cuz of the tapes being destroyed) than punish Goodell for destroying them. Fire him!! It's almost like he worked with the Patriots on all of this. If Specter had some ground to stand on I'd say keep on it, but with those tapes being destroyed, unless a bunch of witnesses come out, I don't see this thing ever getting off the ground to punish the Pats, Belichick or anyone else. The Patriots will get away with this and the fact that it could have possibly cost us another super bowl win is disgusting.

quoting SteelersSaint:

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quoting Aasmith9149:

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The dealings with the patriots are over and done with, there is a possibility that specter will try to go after Goodell but I predict minimal results with that.  It may seem huge now, but when you think about bad publicity in the MLB I'd bet more people recall Pete Rose before they call up the blacksock scandal, this will last a while, but it'll fade.  Short final comment involving the punishment, the patriots could have been fined more, but the draft pick was a good punishment (not the NFL's fault the pats had 2 first rounders) and the fines to belichick were enough.  I already gave a few examples last night about fines in the NFL and the biggest one prior to spygate was 250,000 for Ray Lewis when he lied to police about the whole stabbing incident, so im pretty happy with the fine to bill.  It's all right ot be upset about it because we're all biased about this (Goodell included) and when emotions get this high about something theres no way everyone will walk away happy.

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I am completely confused as to how you can compare cheating the NFL rule book by one NFL team gaining three Super Bowl trophies and one almost perfect season with an additional Super Bowl trophy to what happened in the off season as to Ray Lewis's involvement into a double murder?  Ray Lewis is completely different as it is with Pete Rose gambling problems to an actual team in a sport having an unfair advantage of  winning.   The only thing you can compare “SpyGate” to is the Chicago “Black” Sox.  There a majority of a team got together in attempt to throw a World Series game(s).  Ray Lewis was somehow involved with two people being murdered and if not directly responsible, Ray Lewis knows who did it and would not cooperate with authorities.  The man makes me sick to see to this day, but it no way compares to cheating since 2000 and winning three Super Bowl trophies and almost one more.  “SpyGate” is huge and I do not ever see it going away in the sense New England will not be considered a cheater of three Super Bowls. 

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1.  The NFL fined Ray 250,000 dollars for lying to police about a double murder.  Now I dont know about you, but I dont care how many games you rig, it's still not as important as the loss of human life, and I think morally what Lewis did was worse than what the Patriots did, but the patriots still got a larger fine; which shows that the NFL does place great importance on this issue.

2.  The Pete Rose example just goes to show that these scandals do stick around, but they dont stay in the front.  All Rose did was gamble, but I think people are more likely to recall that, than the blacksock scandal.  Sadly, I'm sure some player will manage to do something stupid and it will completely overshadow spygate.  Given that guys like Pacman Jones, Chris Henry and Ricky Williams are more prevalent in the league unsavory stories will cover up spygate rather quickly.

That being said, the issue wont go away, but it certainly will fade away, like everything else.

Here's a link to an article in the NYC Daily News that doesn't debate whether the investigation is over and done with (and it is, I think we all have to admit).  It just talks about who Bill Belichick is, what his entire NFL history has been, and why we shouldn't be surprised that he's demonstated his sincere belief that rules don't apply to him. I noticed that most of the other threads on this matter have been moved to 'Other football talk' which is a good move. Here's the link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/2007/09/16/2007-09-16_patriots_bill_belichick_never_played_by_.html

quoting swang228:

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The only thing I don't understand is WHY were the tapes destroyed? Because if they got totally busted for cheating it would destroy the integrity of the NFL? I don't buy it!! The people who cheated should all be punished. Because we may never find that out (cuz of the tapes being destroyed) than punish Goodell for destroying them. Fire him!! It's almost like he worked with the Patriots on all of this. If Specter had some ground to stand on I'd say keep on it, but with those tapes being destroyed, unless a bunch of witnesses come out, I don't see this thing ever getting off the ground to punish the Pats, Belichick or anyone else. The Patriots will get away with this and the fact that it could have possibly cost us another super bowl win is disgusting.

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Goodell had an all right reason for it, he didnt want to make the tapes public and let all the teams around the league watch the handsignals of the teams being filmed.  That would pretty much make all of the NFL like the patriots, at least for the few games that were filmed.  But, you could have just kept the tapes private and then saved the punishment for the offseason.  Of course, how many of us would have really wanted/allowed the NFL to wait until the offseason?  It was the epic choice of 'do i get kicked in the teeth or the groin?'  Looking back, waiting until the offseason would have been the right choice though i think that during the season Goodell would have been ripped more than he is being ripped right now.

quoting Aasmith9149:

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Goodell had an all right reason for it, he didnt want to make the tapes public and let all the teams around the league watch the handsignals of the teams being filmed.  That would pretty much make all of the NFL like the patriots, at least for the few games that were filmed.  But, you could have just kept the tapes private and then saved the punishment for the offseason.  Of course, how many of us would have really wanted/allowed the NFL to wait until the offseason?  It was the epic choice of 'do i get kicked in the teeth or the groin?'  Looking back, waiting until the offseason would have been the right choice though i think that during the season Goodell would have been ripped more than he is being ripped right now.

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I could buy that .... unitl last Tuesday ...If that was the REAL reason ..... Then why did he show off the tapes that Walsh gave him?

IMO ... Goodell destroyed the tapes for one reason and one reason only.... Simply to get rid of the evidence, so he could down play how far back & how deep this went.

He was trying to proctect the NFL's image, which is what he should do.

Then Specter & Walsh came out & blew this whole thing up.