FanHouse ArlenSpecter

A month ago today Barack Obama became the first African-American to win a presidential election. And this week, another glass ceiling has been broken: the NFL has its first female player. At least according to Matt Hasselbeck, who on Tuesday took part in the NFL's "Play 60" program, which encourages young folks to get at least 60 minutes of exercise each day.

The Seahawks quarterback showed up at Issaquah (WA) Middle School to spread the good word, and to also answer a few questions. This one was easily the best of the bunch.

I like to give Sports Illustrated's Peter King the business from time to time for his love love of all things Brett Favre and Tom Brady. In light of recent events, however, King may be a one-handsome-NFL-quarterback man going forward (congrats, Tom! Hurry back!).

But when Mr. PK isn't slurping his two BFFs, he occasionally has something interesting to say. Like this nugget on extending the NFL season to 18 games, buried in his Monday Morning Quarterback column:

Somewhere down on the list of the little headlines from the NFL's annual fall meetings last week was the one about an 18-game regular-season schedule roaring down the tracks and headed for the 2010 or 2011 season, presumably with a corresponding drop in preseason games from four to two. ...

Playing 18 regular-season games would not make the football product better, but it would make the owners richer.

Exactly. Two more regular-season games means 120 additional minutes for players to get hurt as some of them prepare for the playoffs. Anecdotally, I'd think the risk of injury increases as the season progresses; partly because almost every player is already nicked and bruised and more susceptible to getting hurt, and also because the laws of probability and physics suggest that sooner or later, bad things will happen when 300-pound dudes continually run full-speed into each other.

But the fans want it, right?

Tell me if this sounds familiar: U.S. senator crusades to end corruption, except nobody cares because: a) instead of targeting lobbyists or corporate negligence, it's a professional sports team, and b) this in no way helps his constituents.

Well, Arlen Specter, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, has decided that Spygate is, in fact, not over. Again. (He's the Brett Favre of Capitol Hill, but with fewer career interceptions.) Which means that after proclaiming the investigation dead on June 17, and then, three days later, leaving open the possibility that he wasn't necessarily finished wasting taxpayer dollars, Specter has decided that the Republican National Convention was the perfect time to get his name back in the paper.

"I don't do anything except with vigor," Specter told the Track yesterday ... "I think there will be more on the issue of irregularities with the NFL. I published a report in June that gave my position, but there will be more aspects of this that need to be examined."

Enjoy your heaping dose of vigor, Pennsylvania residents, because unless you work for Comcast, the guy you elected to represent you won't be doing his job. Apparently, the NFL needs saving and Specter's just the man to do it, although he readily admits he can't do anything for the Redskins offense.

via PFT

I read MJD's headline at Shutdown Corner and just figured some enterprising soul had uploaded a video of Bill Belichick actually operating a video camera on the sidelines last season, or maybe we finally had visual proof that the Unabomber was in the stands during the Rams Super Bowl walkthrough, or perhaps someone uncovered more evidence that William the Great really gets off on pushing photographers.

No, no and ... no. This footage goes back to the '90s, when Belichick was coaching the Browns. And after an otherwise totally predictable throttling at the hands of division rival Pittsburgh, the Cleveland head coach, apparently fed up with it all, makes his way to the locker room after the game. But before he gets there, the Steelers' Greg Lloyd offers to shake his hand (as humans often do -- you know, as a common courtesy) and awkwardness ensues:



Shocking, I know. I mean, this is the same guy who LaDainain Tomlinson accused of "having no class", and who also left the field before Super Bowl XLII had ended, but well after the Patriots' fate had been decided.

Somebody get Senator Arlen Specter on the horn. I think we just found a reason to reopen the Spygate investigation.

[Shutdown Corner]
[KSK]

Willie Andrews will now have all kinds of time to pretend-shoot his fiancé. After being arrested for pointing a gun to the head of the future Ms. Andrews, the Patriots took the totally predictable step of releasing him. Obviously, buying illegal drugs is a much smarter career move. Or being something more than an easily replaceable fringe player.

On Tuesday, Josh Alper made the point that in the NFL, talent is always weighed against criminal activity, and yesterday, the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan wrote an entire column on the subject.

It's hardly surprising to learn that, despite the Al Saunders-playbook-length rap sheet, Dig Dug Jones can get another shot at redemption, but the NFL is all about winning and sometimes criminal activity takes a backseat to talent.

There's nothing new in all this. Seldom does honor trump pragmatism in the world of professional sports. Did I say "professional"? Make that sports, period. The late and truly great Abe Lemons was once asked why he didn't have a curfew for his Oklahoma City University basketball team. " 'Cause you always catch the wrong guys," he explained.

Dear Lord, thank you for Clinton Portis and blog wars, but mostly for Clinton Portis because he doesn't take himself quite so seriously.

Dan Steinberg writes that the artist also known as "Southeast Jerome", "Coach Janky Spanky", "Bro Sweets", "Choo-Choo", "Sheriff Gonnagetcha", and "Dolemite Jenkins", unveiled four new characters this week, and he's looking for YOUR help on which one to debut to the Washington-area media this fall.

You can see all four characters and vote here, but if Dr. Do Itch Big doesn't win, the whole thing is rigged. Just like Spygate, which means we can expect Senator Arlen Specter to get involved, and, really, nobody wants that.

According to his bio, Do Itch Big is a dentist who does his own work (of course he does), and goes by the motto, "Cleaning up the NFL one mouth at a time." And then there's this fun fact: "The good doctor started his bicuspid crusade by enhancing the grills of former Giants DE Michael Strahan and Bills RB Marshawn Lynch." Nice.

Arlen Specter is vigilant, I'll give him that. He may not be particularly well spoken -- just a few days ago the Pennsylvania senator told the Philadelphia Daily News' editorial board that "I've gone as far as I can" with Spygate, and suggested that he'd drop the matter some four months after the rest of us.

Yeah, forget that. As it turns out, his comments to the Daily News people "didn't really come out with the proper flavor." Translation: I'm nailing Bill Belichick's ass to the wall, no matter what it takes. Constituents be damned!

"My view on the overall situation is that we may well see the other shoe drop somewhere," Specter said. "We went about as far as we could go, given the public attitude today about the economy and gas prices and Iraq. We're always very careful about initiating a Congressional investigation.

"But that isn't to say, by any means, it's over."

Fantastic. My advice: Specter should hire Kenneth Starr to head up the investigation, and that way, in addition to occasionally unearthing a Spygate-related nugget, we'll get the gratuitous erotic tidbit tangentially having to do with football. Good times.

Despite a lack of support from, well, everyone, Specter trudges on. He admits to being "a little surprised more people weren't concerned" about Spygate, but because NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is trying to "minimize the impact" of the cheating allegations, the good senator will continue to fight the good fight. All by himself.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter said today that an independent investigation is needed of the New England Patriots' practice of spying on their opponents.

"There ought to be an impartial investigation, an outside investigation, like the investigation that baseball had with Senator George Mitchell," Specter said.

Specter said he first became interested in the Patriotgate story in November, when he first heard that the NFL had destroyed the tapes the Patriots turned in to the league. He said the NFL was not responsive to his requests for more information, and he suggested that the league is trying to sweep the issue under the rug.

Whether Specter gets his Mitchell Commission or not, there's no question that despite the talk this morning that the Spygate story is over, Specter doesn't think it should be -- and U.S. senators have a way of keeping stories alive.

Jeffrey Standen, a professor of law at Williamette University writes a blog called The Sports Law Professor. His most recent entry, entitled "Roger Goodell and the Cheating Scandal," I think is worth a read, even if I don't agree with all of it.

His argument is nuanced and is best read in its non-summarized form, but he's a blogger so he knows how these things work. His contention is that the most profitable sports league in the world could have chosen someone more educated, seasoned and accomplished to be its commissioner. That so far in his job, Roger Goodell is "starting to look like an unthinking moralist."

A moralist, as Professor Standen explains, is "the kind of person who prefers to arrive at the facile, stark ethical conclusion than to perform the heavy mental exercise of making fine distinctions that might produce a better answer."

From this POV, Goodell has painted himself into a corner with the severity of the rhetoric and punishment he's used to respond to the Patriotgate Spygate and player discipline scandals.

"A commissioner only has so much moral capital to expend," he writes, and Goodell has spent his in awkward, to high profile ways.

I'm not sure I agree with his conclusions relating to Spygate (I believe Goodell is responding in part to the pressure he is feeling from Senator Arlen Specter). However, I do have significant concerns about Goodell turning the commissioners office into nothing more than an arbitrary and capricious police, jury and judge.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter was a guest on Rush Limbaugh's radio show today, and at the end of the interview, the subject turned to Specter's investigation of the New England Patriots.

Limbaugh asked Specter whether any new information has emerged about Matt Walsh, the former Patriots employee who may or may not have filmed the Rams' final walkthrough practice before the 2002 Super Bowl. This is the pertinent exchange:


Specter is making a very serious accusation when he says that the NFL is discouraging Walsh from coming forward, an accusation that makes me think there could be Senate hearings at which Walsh, Roger Goodell and Bill Belichick are all called to testify. As far as Specter is concerned, this story is far from over.

A full transcript of Limbaugh's interview with Specter is at RushLimbaugh.com; more commentary is at Pro Football Talk, and the specific questions and answers about Patriotgate are after the jump.