PHOENIX-- --The asterisk is there, and it's not going away for the foreseeable future.
If there was still doubt as tomorrow's Super Bowl approaches that the taint of Spygate would be attached to the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick if they finish 19-0 this season, it disappeared yesterday, with the morning edition of The New York Times and the ensuing state-of-the-NFL press conference by commissioner Roger Goodell.
In his 45 minutes before the cameras, Goodell had to answer a volley of questions about Spygate, and the news, in the Times, of Sen. Arlen Specter's plans to call Goodell and other NFL officials before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the issue. Up for debate, Specter said, was the integrity of the game, and he likened the NFL's actions in the case to the destruction of interviews with suspected terrorists. (Specter is also chair of the Senate Bloated Hyperbole Committee.)
Whether the main topic of the day would have been Spygate had the Specter story not broken is debatable. It definitely should have been, considering the vacuum of real information about how Goodell and the NFL handled the signal-taping case from Week 1 - how he did and did not discipline the Patriots, and how and why the evidence requested and gathered was destroyed by the league.
The odds are that Goodell would have been grilled to some extent about it even before the Times story. The specter of Specter merely cranked it up a few notches. Goodell handled the questions smoothly. He also handled them with a little bite, which didn't appear to go over particularly well with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, seated in the audience to the right of Goodell, who afterward evaded the resulting swarm of reporters like Kevin Faulk on a third-down swing pass.
All of that said, though, none of it means Goodell handled the questions satisfactorily. And his answer to at least two references to the legitimacy of the Patriots' mark this season and in past seasons weren't all that convincing, either, even with the tone of certainty Goodell lent to his replies.
Eventually, Goodell was asked if he could give his assurance that the Patriots' 2005 Super Bowl defeat of the team from Specter's state, the Philadelphia Eagles, was clean.
"Yes, the same way I gave it to you, the same way I said it from Day One," Goodell said.
Earlier, he had given his reasons for that answer: that his investigation had unveiled illegal taping by the Patriots in the opener and in select games in 2006 - but nothing further. Also, he said he saw smaller, isolated incidents from other teams that were violations but did not warrant disciplinary action.
More to the point of the day's theme, Goodell said he felt sure that the team had turned over everything he had requested, was holding nothing back and was being straightforward with him. So, he said, he destroyed everything to make sure no leaks came out, and if they did, to narrow down where they might have come from (essentially, the Patriots).
"I thought it was the best way to ensure that the Patriots were following my instructions," he said. What sealed his decision, he added, was the leaking and airing of a segment of the tapes by CBS when he thought the evidence had been secured.
If he found the line of questioning annoying, he didn't let on - because he could not deny that the questions were legit, and that the bigger picture was worrisome. In the middle of a season that otherwise would have been celebrated unconditionally and across the board, seeds of mistrust had been sown, and they had been watered not just by the Patriots, but by the NFL itself.
Specter himself raised that issue in the Times story: "It's the same old story ... What you did is never as important as the cover-up. This sequence raises more concerns and doubts."
Say what you will about grandstanding politicians and Congressmen earning brownie points for their voting districts. But Specter is hardly alone. It will be a long time before the term "Spygate" isn't mentioned in the same sentence as the 2007 Patriots, for better or worse.
In a world where perception becomes reality in a hurry, the perception of a team that cheated to become perfect will live a long life. If that weren't the case, Goodell would have gotten around to a lot more topics yesterday.
david.steele@baltsun.com
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