The idea that the U.S. government has taken a special interest in the problems of the NFL smacks of ulterior motives!
What could they be? Is the NFL not generating enough tax dollars?
Specter, or should we rename him Senator Spectacle, apparently said that “they are enormous role models for everybody. If you can cheat in the NFL, you can cheat in college, you can cheat in high school, you can cheat on your grade-school math test. There’s no limit as to what you can do. I think they owe the public a lot more candor and a lot more credibility.”
I am beyond shocked at this. A politician telling someone not to be a liar. If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is! It goes without saying that cheating is bad, and getting caught at cheating is worse.
However, there are bigger issues for the NFL, and bigger issues at hand for the U.S. government. The NFL certainly handled it poorly. However, what are you going to do? Strip the Patriots of their titles? If you do that you might want to take away the Super Bowl XXV victory for the Giants. Their defensive scheme contained the favored Buffalo Bills, and their offense was among the best of the early 1990s.
This is the problem; where do you stop? The results are in, and if you want to correct history, then there is much to do, and it is all pointless in the end. A Super Bowl win means endorsements, sales, and prestige. If you go back and award the trophy to some other team, they still do not profit from the win. Certainly they get the statistical win and the trophy but it doesn't come with the real effects.
It would be like awarding the presidency to Al Gore after discovering that George Bush Jr. had cheated. We would still have the effects of the past eight years of the Bush administration. The Rams would not benefit from the Super Bowl win.
It has been insinuated that Senator Spectacle is a Steelers fan and that his team was affected by the Patriots filming. If this is so, then it certainly was wrong.
However, the Steelers were recent beneficiaries of some of the worst officiating of any game I've ever seen when they won Super Bowl XL. Should the referees go back and correct their calls, and fix that game in which the far superior Seahawk team was robbed of a championship that they deserved? I was hoping that the Steelers would win that game but not the way it was won.
The big picture is that this is not about cheating or even championships. The real reason is money. The U.S. government is looking to influence professional sports, and as it has in the past, it will succeed. We will either end up with guidelines and government oversight or another league to compete with the NFL.
I am of the hope that it is a new league, and not government interference with a sport that has become a spectacle in its own right. If the U.S. government wants to fix the NFL, perhaps it should look at fixing itself first!
Shall we start by ridding ourselves of the Electoral College? A popular vote wins the election. We can then limit terms of the Senate, House of Representatives, and Supreme Court. To be perfectly honest it is insane to give someone the job of Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime guarantee! The Senate and House at least stand for elections.
What else can we change? Maybe healthcare, as someone else already said. We can stop listening to people who endorse fossil fuel use ,and start looking for a healthier alternative, preferably the healthiest! Government should not exist to profit those holding office! This means that when someone is in government, they should not have any influence over government contracts that benefit companies to which they belong.
It is absurd that a Senator is calling anyone out for mishandling anything. I certainly hope that there is an outcry for no further waste of time or money spent on this topic.
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4 months ago
Ummm... I hate to break it to you, but you are completely wrong on multiple points:
1. Specter is a dyed-in-the-wool Eagles fan, NOT a Steelers fan. Of course, considering that the Cheaters have admitted to videotaping during the season they "beat" the Eagles in the Superbowl gives him just as much reason to be pissed off.
2. Even more importantly, the NFL operates as a 501(c) non-profit sporting league, meaning that it pays NO taxes to the federal government. As part of this arrangement, the league agrees to grant the government special oversight rights in order to maintain the integrity of the competition. Specter not only has a right to do this, he is duty-bound as an elected representative of the U.S. government to do everything within his power to ensure that this scandal is not swept under the rug.
3. Analysis of the Steelers' Superbowl victory over the Seahawks shows that only one of the allegedly controversial calls made in the Steelers' favor was actually wrong, that being the illegal tackle called against Hasselbeck after throwing his 4th quarter interception, by which point the game had already been sealed in the Steelers' favor. It of course doesn't help the conspiracy theorists' crediblity that at the John Madden, who has had a bone to pick with the Steelers since falling Victim to the Immaculate Reception, was the color man in the booth complaining the loudest about the supposedly bad officiating.
Of course no one, especially fans of the "far superior" Seahawks, of which I am assuming you are one, mentions Hasselbeck's two picks and Holmgren's decision to turtule at the end of the game as factors that might have influenced the outcome of the game.
I am not even a Steelers fan (Go Jags!), but it seems pretty clear to me that you either have a problem with the Steelers or are a Cheatriots apologist and simply want to obscure this issue. Yeah, the government has other, more important things to do, but it seems highly disingenuous to complain about ONE Senator doing his job and protecting the rights of both casual fans and those who have been bilked out of large sums of money wagering on contests that were alleged to have been fair.
4 months ago
It was a columnist for Yahoo that insinuated Specter was a Steelers fan. I later read he was an Eagles fan. Thanks for clarifying that.
When I said that the government makes money off of the NFL I was referring to taxes made on the sale of merchandise, not to mention taxes I am certain those employed within the NFL pay.
I am not a Seahawks fan. You must have missed the part where I said that I was hoping for a Steelers win. However, as I watched the game in disbelief, I saw bad calls that crippled the momentum of the game. Face it, if you make a bad call that halts a drive it does more than halt a drive. It gets into the minds of those playing and they play poorly. It has been over 2 years since I saw that game so forgive me if I am fuzzy on what happened when but I can tell you that as a fan living in Europe I felt cheated out of my sleep since I was up from midnight until 4 am to watch the game.
My point, in case you missed it, was that one cannot correct history and have the same effect as if the story had never unfolded the way it did.
I am certain that you are right that the government should prevent corruption of sports but Specter seems to be creating a spectacle and that is, as you pointed out in your statement that he is an Eagles fan with sour grapes about their loss in the Super Bowl, working for another reason apart from fairness in sports. This issue could be used to benefit him and had it occurred a year ago you might have seen him trying his hand at running for President.
Don't be naive where money and power are concerned. It isn't fairness anyone, even you, care about. Someone else said it but I will paraphrase. If any of the other 31 teams did underhanded things and won their fan base wouldn't care. Those trophies and the success and prestige are what people care about. It is the ends they are concerned with and not the means with which you get there. This certainly contradicts the idea that it is the journey that is important and not the destination. If you never arrive, say with a Super Bowl victory, then your journey involving 18 wins, all but 4 or 5 being extremely convincing of your superiority, then your journey was interesting but incomplete.
4 months ago
You have to realize that cheating in pro sports is something bigger than the sport itself. With the amount of money that goes through gambling transactions, any type of cheating has to be investigated. And that is the door Goodell, Rooney, Kraft et. al. don't want Specter to open.
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