NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has talked with Belichick-irritating stool pigeon Matt Walsh, seen the tapes, and concluded that there's nothing new in the ex-Pats assistant's revelations.
Spygate grew to assimilate the Browns last week when it was revealed that Walsh taped the signals of Butch Davis and and his staff in 2001 and 2002. What the Patriots organization intended to learn from this, other than how no possible combination of signals would make Gerard Warren worthy of the #3 pick, is still uncertain.
According to Fox Sports:
"The fundamental information that Matt provided was consistent with what we disciplined the Patriots for last fall," Goodell said at a news conference. The most scandalous part of the tapes shown had nothing to do with stealing signals - it was several minutes of close-ups of San Diego Chargers cheerleaders performing during a 2002 game."
The NFL commish was left saying that there was no where else for the investigation to go beyond the punishments meted out last year.
This won't do down well with people who hate the Patriots, as can be seen from the comments on the story posted by the OBR's corporate big brother. Now that it's the off-season, I should crank out a "Construct Your Own Conspiracy Theory" section on the site. It would be sort of like "Build-a-Bear Workshop", but with more tin foil.
Put me in the camp of those demanding more information. I believe that we, as fans of NFL football, should not rest until this scandalous cheerleader videotape is made publicly available so we can judge for ourselves. Preferably on Youtube, in high-def.
It's up to us to keep the sport pure, one cheerleader video at a time.
UPDATE: The Patriots have gotten all passive/aggressive via press release this afternoon:
"We want to address the allegation that the Patriots taped the Rams' walkthrough prior to Super Bowl XXXVI. For the past three-and-a-half months, we have been defending ourselves against assumptions made based on an unsubstantiated report rather than on facts or evidence. Despite our adamant denials, the report ran on February 2, 2008, the day before Super Bowl XLII. That game was the second-most watched program in television history and it is unfortunate that today's news will not also reach an audience of that size. We hope that with Matt Walsh's disclosures, everyone will finally believe what we have been saying all along and emphatically stated on the day of the initial report: 'The suggestion that the New England Patriots recorded the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough on the day before Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 is absolutely false. Any suggestion to the contrary is untrue.'"