Specter and Goodell Resolve Little

The meeting in Sen. Arlen Specter’s office was definitely the "B" movie yesterday on Capitol Hill’s sports double feature.

Curiously though, the Pennsylvania Republican’s one-hour, 40-minute "Spygate" session with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had the same theme as the Roger Clemens hearing:

The two principals differed on the matter at the heart of a dispute their meeting did little to resolve.

Specter, who has fought publicly with the league in recent weeks and has threatened congressional hearings, called "completely invalid" Goodell’s defense of the league’s destruction of tapes the New England Patriots made during a Sept. 9 game against the New York Jets.

Asked why, 90 minutes after the discussion in his Hart Senate Building office with Goodell had concluded, he pointed to the time line.

The senator said the punishment for the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick was handed down Sept. 13, five days before the league had even received notes on the taping and a copy of the tape, which the Patriots admitted was an effort to intercept the Jets’ sideline signals. On Sept. 20, the tapes were destroyed.

"[As a result], it was really impossible for Commissioner Goodell to be specifc about what in the game had been taped," Specter said.

According to Goodell, who said he hoped Specter "understands the facts better now," the Patriots had admitted guilt in the matter — Belichick claimed he had not known it was illegal to use the tapes while the game was in progress — so there was no reason to keep the tapes.

"We don’t have a vault" in which to keep such things, the commissioner said during an impromptu news conference in a hallway outside Specter’s corner office on the seventh floor. "Once we had an admission, there was no reason to keep them."

Belichick was fined $500,000 and the team was fined $250,000. The Patriots also forfeited a first-round draft pick.

Specter, a former prosecutor who left the meeting before the commissioner because he had to vote on an intelligence bill, held his own news conference later in the Capitol. He laughed when told of Goodell’s reasoning.

"If there’s an admission of guilt, you always protect the evidence," he said.

According to Goodell, the Spygate issue was closed unless new evidence was produced.

"That’s up to Senator Specter," he said when asked whether there would be further investigation into the issue. "We’re not following up; the senator is."

Specter declined to say whether he believed that formal hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he is the ranking member, might be necessary given his dissatisfaction with the league’s explanations.

"We’ll go through this thing step-by-step," he said.

Goodell said Specter raised the subject of the NFL’s antitrust exemption, but declined to characterize that as a threat.

"He expressed his concern for our antitrust exemption," the commissioner said, "and that it’s important for the NFL to be responsible with that. And I believe we have been."

Belichick, according to the senator, admitted to taping opponents during games since he got the job in New England in 2000, even though employees had been evicted from games in Detroit and Green Bay in 2006.

"Bill Belichick thought you could use electronic equipment as long as that information was not used in the game," Goodell said.

The two men also discussed the Patriots-Eagles meeting in Super Bowl XXXIX. Specter had asked the league to examine whether the Patriots had cheated during their victory in that game.

Asked how he could be convinced that game was on the level, the commissioner said, "by the evidence we had, the tapings we had, the information and notes we had.

"Second of all, it was very clear in my discussions with [Eagles owner] Jeffrey Lurie and coach Andy Reid that they believe the outcome of that game was legitimate."

"They had played earlier in the preseason, so the opportunity [for cheating] was present," Specter said. "But Commissioner Goodell said that had not occurred."

He said information received by his office indicated it was possible for information garnered by the illegal taping to be transmitted to quarterbacks through the radio transmitters in their helmets.

As for Matt Walsh, the former Patriots employee who claimed before this year’s Super Bowl that he had taped a St. Louis Rams practice before that game, Goodell said his office had been unsuccessful in trying to get additional information from him.

Specter suggested that Walsh was worried about possible criminal charges and wanted to be assured of immunity before providing that information, something Specter said the NFL should do.

Asked whether he regretted destroying the tapes, given Specter’s persistent questions now, Goodell, whose father was a Democratic senator from New York, said "absolutely not."