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“Spygate” ends with a whimper

Talk about shooting a dead horse.

Matt Walsh, that mysterious Patriots video guy, has finally turned over all his tapes of the Patriots’ illegal signal-stealing from 2000 to 2002. According to SI.com, the eight tapes include footage of six games against a total of five opponents: the Dolphins, Bills, Browns, Chargers, and Steelers. That Steelers game was the 2002 AFC championship game.

But something important is missing from that list: the tape of the Rams’ final walkthrough on the day before Super Bowl XXXVI. This was the only tape that really mattered anymore. The Patriots had already admitted to the offenses listed above. Walsh has only proven what we already knew anyway. The Pats may be mildly punished now that these tapes have been turned over, although it is unlikely, since the NFL and various team officials keep repeating that this whole incident is a nonissue.

The point is, the alleged Super Bowl cheating will never be proven now. Walsh does not have that tape. His lawyer’s stance is that Walsh never claimed to have such a tape, and it’s our fault for assuming that he did. Spygate is over.

All we know for sure now is that Matt Walsh is an opportunistic, greedy, and thoroughly reprehensible man. Maybe he didn’t claim to have the SB tapes, but he never said he didn’t have them, either. With speculation rampant that Walsh would dethrone the hated Pats, many Rams fans had been looking to him to salvage their memories of that terrible upset in 2002. Walsh took advantage of his undeserved celebrity to tease the sports world. He cut a deal with the NFL and the Patriots that protects him from future litigation, pays his legal expenses for him, and provides him with an expenses-paid trip to New York (he currently is in Hawaii, where he has become a pro golfer). All for the sake of proof he never had to begin with.

I was never a proponent of the idea that the Super Bowl title should be taken away from the Patriots, even if that tape was found. The Rams, even at an unfair disadvantage, could have won that game if Mike Martz had not lost his head and refused to use his Hall-of-Fame caliber running back. But this is an absolutely outrageous way for Spygate to end. I don’t care that Matt Walsh did not specifically say he had proof. In the face of overwhelming speculation, he remained silent. What were we supposed to think? Walsh has conned the entire NFL and all of its fans, and he’s going to get away with it without having to pay a single penny.

It’s just not right.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Spygate, National Football League, Professional Sports, St. Louis Rams, NFL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.