PHOENIX, Arizona (AFP) — With Congress breathing down his neck, National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that the New England spy scandal hadn't given the perfect Patriots an advantage on the playing field.
"I don't think it taints their accomplishments," Goodell said. "The action we took was decisive. It was unprecedented. It sent a loud message not only to the Patriots but to every NFL team that they better follow the rules."
The Patriots completed a 16-0 regular season, and after two postseason victories take a unprecedented 18-0 record into Super Bowl 42 against the New York Giants on Sunday.
With a win, the Patriots could join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only NFL teams to complete undefeated championship seasons, and in the process they would win their fourth Super Bowl in seven years.
Their sparkling season started under a cloud, however, when head coach Bill Belichick and the team were judged to have violated NFL rules by filming the New York Jets' defensive signals during their season-opening game.
After reviewing the evidence, Goodell fined Belichick 500,000 dollars. The Patriots franchise was fined 250,000 dollars and stripped of a first-round draft selection.
After imposing the sanctions, the NFL said it had destroyed the tapes.
On Friday, Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wanted to know why the tapes were destroyed.
"I don't see any reason for the destruction of the tapes," Specter said. "I don't see any reason for that at all."
Specter said Goodell has not been subpoenad and that he has not yet asked committee chairman, Democrat Patrick Leahy, to schedule a hearing with specific reference to the Spygate matter.
"I'm going to take it a step at a time. We've got a lot on the agenda right now," Specter said.
Specter's remarks at a Friday news conference came after the New York Times reported he planned to call Goodell in front of the committee to explain why the tapes were destroyed.
"The NFL has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption," Specter told the newspaper.
"The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game. It's analogous to the CIA destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed."
Goodell said he decided to destroy the tapes after one was leaked to the media. He said he believed it was the best way to insure that the Patriots had complied with his instructions in handing over all of the material they may have gathered by means prohibited by the league, specifically video-taping opposing teams on the sidelines.
"Of course I'll be more than welcome to speak to the senator," Goodell said. "I believe there are very good explanations of why I destroyed the tapes, or had our staff destroy the tapes, and it was helpful in making sure my instructions were followed exactly."
Goodell said that the evidence - tapes and notes - he had collected from the Patriots backed up what the team had told him about their activities in attempting to decipher the play-calling signals of their opponents.
He also noted that such attempts are common in the NFL, as they are in baseball.
"I'm not sure there isn't a coach in the league who doesn't expect their signals are being intercepted in some way by other teams," Goodell said.
"I think it was coach (Bill) Parcells who said any coach who doesn't expect his signals to be stolen is stupid."
That said, Goodell reiterated that he believed the Patriots came by their perfect 2007 record - and their Super Bowl titles in 2001, 2003 and 2004 - honestly.
"I think what they did this season was done within the rules on a level playing field, and I think their record is extraordinary. It has never been done before, 18-0," he said.
"There is no indication that (taping) benefitted them in any of the Super Bowl victories."
Belichick, meeting the media for the last time before Sunday's NFL championship spectacular, angrily sidestepped the issue.
"That's a league matter. I don't know anything about it," Belichick snapped.
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