No, the real reason Specter won't let it go is because of little Johnny and all of the little Johnnys in this country, who, even as we speak, are seriously considering bringing cheat sheets with them to their next fourth-grade math quiz.

"People raise a question why [I want to] look into this," the Pennsylvania Republican said. "Well, the sports leagues, including the NFL, have a very preferred status in our society. They have an antitrust exemption. And that antitrust exemption is worth its weight in wildcats. Without the antitrust exemption, they wouldn't be able to pool their revenues and control the schedule.

"They are enormous role models for everybody. But if you can cheat in the NFL, you can cheat in college and 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."

So, a day after Goodell said he is just about ready to close the book on Spygate - "As I stand before you . . . I don't know where else I would turn," he said Tuesday - Specter is just getting warmed up.

At a noon news conference yesterday in Washington, Specter, clearly showing the effects of the chemo treatments from his latest battle with cancer, called for an independent investigation into Spygate.

"What is necessary is an objective investigation, an outside investigation," he said. "Like the one that baseball had with the help of former Sen. George Mitchell. This one [by the NFL] has not been objective."

Specter isn't ready to accuse the NFL of a coverup.

"I don't think I need to go quite that far," he said. "Coverup is a very strong term. I'm not going to adopt it. Yet."

But he feels Spygate presents a clear conflict of interest for the league that makes sweeping the illegal videotaping scandal under the rug a much higher priority than uncovering the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"The league has every reason not to want to say too much," Specter said. "It has a gigantic economic interest. If you take a look at what's happened to the value of football teams, they've escalated. The core of their game is integrity. It's very much in the interest of every NFL owner and others to do what they're doing, [which is] say it didn't amount to much, to say it didn't have any effect on games, to say let's move on.

"If the public loses confidence in professional football, it's going to be like wrestling. They're not going to have a gate [attendance]. They're not going to have TV. So there's a real keen interest [in wanting it to go away]."

Specter isn't completely off-base there. Spygate definitely has been a black eye for the league, and has, to a certain degree, tainted the Patriots' three Super Bowl victories, including the one over the Eagles.

You can question whether Goodell was tough enough on the Patriots and their head coach, Bill Belichick, last September when he fined them $750,000 and made them forfeit a first-round draft pick. Personally, I thought he also should have suspended Belichick for at least two games and made the Patriots give up the higher of their two first-round picks.

But I disagree with Specter's suggestion that the league's investigation of the Patriots has been flawed or less than thorough.

At his news conference, he once again harped on Goodell's decision to destroy the tapes and notes he got from the Patriots last September. It probably wasn't the smartest thing the commish ever has done. But we're not exactly talking about a murder suspect dumping his gun down a sewer drain.

"[Goodell] said he didn't want anyone else to get them because it might create an unlevel playing field," Specter said. "Well, he couldn't sell that in kindergarten. At least where I went to kindergarten, he couldn't sell it. It's really an insult to the intelligence of the people who follow [pro football]."

Specter was incredulous that Goodell didn't ask former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh, who turned over eight tapes of illegal signal stealing from the 2000 and 2001 seasons before meeting with the commissioner on Tuesday, whether the Patriots also had done it in '03, '04 and '05.

"If you've got the tapes up to '02, and you've already got the tapes [the Patriots initially handed over] starting in '06, you don't have to be an Einstein to figure out '03, '04 and '05 are in between," Specter said. "But Walsh said he was never asked [about those years]."

You also don't need to be an Einstein to know that Walsh left the Patriots in '03. So he would have no firsthand knowledge of what went on in '04 and '05. Besides, Goodell already has said that Belichick has acknowledged videotaping signals since 2000, and that the punishment he handed down in September was for the "totality" of videotaping opposing coaches over the last 8 years, whether they did it in every game or only 60 percent of them.

Goodell also has said repeatedly that if he uncovered anything else beyond the videotaping, including proof that the Patriots had used the tapes to their advantage in the same games they taped - something Belichick insisted they never did - he would hand down further punishment.

In fact, the league plans to reinterview New York Jets quarterbacks coach Brian Daboll after Walsh told Goodell in their Tuesday meeting that Daboll, then the Patriots wide receivers coach, had asked him for his observations of the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough practice the day before Super Bowl XXXVI.

Walsh and three other members of the Patriots' video department were on the field during the walkthrough. Walsh said he didn't videotape the

walkthrough, but did observe some offensive formations and saw the Rams use running back Marshall Faulk as a kick returner. Daboll was interviewed by the commissioner several months ago, but never revealed his conversation with Walsh about the walkthrough.

As a journalist who cut his professional teeth in the post-

Watergate '70s, I love a conspiracy. I'd love to believe the NFL is hiding something, and I'd love to find out what it is. But I don't see it. And, frankly, I'm not sure Arlen Specter sees it either.

I think he's just mad that Goodell, the son of a former U.S. senator, didn't show him enough respect when he initially inquired about why he destroyed the tapes and notes. His anger only increased when he and his staff couldn't get anyone to talk to them when he tried to conduct his own investigation into Spygate earlier this year.

"We were stonewalled everywhere along the line," Specter said.

He's also smart enough to know that his stance on Spygate isn't going to hurt him with Eagles and Steelers fans, whose teams both were victimized by the Patriots in the postseason - the Eagles in aforementioned Super Bowl XXXIX, the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game after the '01 and '04 seasons.

What will happen next? Probably nothing. There's a better chance that Tony Romo will win the next "American Idol" competition than there is of Goodell acquiescing to Specter and bringing in an outside investigator to look into Spygate.

And Specter has zero chance of getting Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to hold a hearing to look into Spy-gate when the price of gas is on a collision course with $4 a gallon.

"I'm not going to make a commitment at this time to press Sen. Leahy or anybody," Specter said. "I'm giving you one man's opinion.

"I'm setting it forth and I want to see what happens. It's one man's opinion, but it's my opinion."

So much for little Johnny's moral compass. *

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