Patriots' 'Spygate' becomes latest breaking non-story

There is a certain hysteria in the news and sports business. Every day there's a big headline. Every day, a breath-stealing story smacks us in the face. We absolutely must know about it -- and then it passes. The current hysteria centers around "Spygate," in reality a big nothing.

The New England Patriots videotaped the defensive signals of the Jets. The Patriots admitted that, and still the National Football League survives and the pillars that hold up the universe have not crumbled. The Patriots videotaped other teams during games and almost certainly used the information to their advantage. The sun still rises in the morning.

This whole thing is being presented as a crisis in Western Civilization and that's the biggest joke of all.

You know what? Sure, the Patriots taped opponents. And I bet -- I could be wrong, but I don't think so -- other teams taped New England, and other teams routinely tape each other, and this thing goes on all the time.

We are living in the real world, not football Utopia -- sorry to shatter your illusions. The NFL is a league in which grown men, sometimes desperate men, try to get an advantage over other grown men. So, they cheat, although they probably don't consider it cheating. And neither do I.

Everything that takes place on the field is about disguise and deception. Teams expect opponents to at least try to figure out their signals, and so they disguise their signals. It's just like baseball where the third-base coach flashes signals and the other team tries to dope them out. A runner at second base always tries to steal the signs from the catcher to the pitcher -- the runner is supposed to do that. Stealing signs is not alien to sports. It is an integral part of sports.

OK, you could say videotaping goes beyond acceptable limits of cheating -- although the notion of acceptable cheating is a mind-bender to begin with. I don't see how anyone draws the limit at videotaping. I mean, it's common practice after each offensive series in a game for the quarterback to study Polaroids of the defensive setup. You know that's the truth. So why are Polaroids in the spirit of the game, but videotapes aren't? Could some genius please explain the difference to all of us, because it's sure too subtle for me?

The big deal in the recent breakout of Spygate -- it's like a recurring fever caused by malaria -- is that some technician named Matt Walsh had the goods that New England infiltrated a Rams walk-through practice before the 2002 Super Bowl. He allegedly videotaped everything and that's why the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Except for one thing. Walsh, who was granted every legal immunity known to man and could have revealed wrongdoing, said he never taped the Rams practice. Period. We are talking non-story here.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, after listening to Walsh spill his guts Tuesday, told the media he would take no further action against the Patriots -- he already had fined them and he fined coach Bill Belichick and he took away a first-round draft choice. Goodell said no new information came out, certainly nothing about the Rams.

At that point, the conspiracy nuts swung into action. Goodell was hiding something. He was protecting the league against who knows what? He also knows the truth about Lee Harvey Oswald and has the goods on the guy who assassinated President McKinley.

Please, everyone, take a deep breath, a cleansing breath. There is no smoking gun and there certainly isn't a smoking video camera. Let the story die a natural death.

Of course, that goes double for Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter who, all of a sudden, appointed himself the conscience of the NFL and wants to get to the bottom of Spygate. Excuse me, but there is a war in Iraq. The housing market crashed. Gas costs as much as diamonds. But, hold the phone, Sen. Specter just noticed moral decay in the NFL. Can civilization survive?

You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.