The good senator spent three hours Tuesday talking with Matt Walsh, the Rose Mary Woods of the NFL's Spygate scandal, and never got around to his original question about the whole kerfuffle.

Did the Patriots cheat the Eagles out of their rightful Super Bowl win Feb. 6, 2005?

"I didn't ask him that. We covered a lot of ground, but we didn't cover all the ground," Specter said yesterday. "There are a lot of questions that I didn't get to."

For goodness' sake, what do we send these people to Congress for, anyway?

The Pennsylvania Republican did learn a lot during his session with the young man who helped the Patriots steal the defensive signals of opponents for several seasons, and he presented some of his findings at a news conference in the Capitol building yesterday.

He also intended to read a prepared statement on the floor of the Senate regarding his latest unearthing of facts crucial to the public well-being. The rest of the Senate was otherwise occupied, however, engaging in what Specter termed a "food fight" over something or other, and neither the Democrats nor Republicans would agree to yield their tomatoes and lend him the floor for a few minutes.

Oh, well. No one said rooting out corruption and protecting democracy would be easy.

It could be that yesterday marked the last recordable gasp of Spygate. Specter essentially said he's convinced the NFL conducted a flimsy investigation into the nefarious methods of Dark Lord Bill Belichick. He would like to see the league approve an outside investigation similar to the one undertaken by former Sen. George Mitchell at the behest of baseball. Failing that, he shook the congressional sword a little bit, but left it in the scabbard.

"I'm not going to make a commitment at this time," he said, referring to future involvement of the Judiciary Committee, where his fellow members have not shown the same enthusiasm for the subject as Specter.

So, this could be it. It's been a great scandal and everything, but didn't fill the empty gaps in the trophy room at One Gold Standard Way.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who had his own lengthy meeting with Walsh on Tuesday, has declared the matter closed. Of course, he did that before talking to Walsh, too, even though the former videotaper for the Patriots would seem a likely candidate to interview in any serious investigation.

"The fundamental information Matt provided was consistent with what we disciplined the Patriots for last fall in that they were taping coaches' signals against NFL policy," Goodell said.

Nothing more to see here. Move along. Even the juicy tidbit that Walsh had recorded the walkthrough of the St. Louis Rams before the Super Bowl in February 2002 fell apart a bit. The Boston Herald, which broke that story, had to issue a "never mind" yesterday, after Walsh said he hadn't taped the practice, but merely reported back with some formations he observed.

Specter said he thinks Goodell is a "nice guy," but one who finds himself "caught in a very heavy apparent conflict of interest." Without public confidence in the integrity of the game, Specter said, pro football would be like "wrestling."

"The league has every reason not to want to say too much," he said.

Senators, regrettably, rarely suffer from the same problem.

But in any case, Specter may have finally extricated himself from this matter, and gotten out with a flourish. He had his sit-down with Walsh, found inconsistencies between what Walsh said and what Goodell has said, and issued a very thorough statement pointing out each of those.

Then he held another news conference, during which he explained the advantages of a no-huddle offense, the value of intercepting signals and - this part hurts - spent a whole lot of time sticking up for the infringed rights of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

It seems that the Steelers beat the Patriots by two touchdowns during the 2004 season, then lost by the same 14-point margin in the AFC championship game three months later. Specter's apparent implication is that intelligence garnered during the first game helped provide the turnaround in the second, although he didn't explain how knowing the Steelers' defensive signals would help the Pats intercept three Ben Roethlisberger passes or score 24 points on a total of four turnovers.

And, hey, what about the Eagles?

"Investigations are really tough," Specter said. "They require a lot of work."

Yeah, but keeping them going after the expiration date on public interest is even harder. That appears to be what is happening here.

It would have been nice to have the answer about Super Bowl XXIX, though.

We don't send these guys to Washington just to ask the tough questions. We want the stupid questions, too.

at 215-854-5842 or bford@phillynews.com. Read

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