Pennington: Congress cheats public by investigating sports

Thursday afternoon, more students were shot dead in an American classroom. Turning to ESPN for a respite from the tragic coverage, I was appalled to find what looked more like C-span than sports coverage.

Rep. Henry Waxman was grilling Roger Clemens. Sen. Arlen Specter was vowing to get to the bottom of Spygate. I just shook my head. What the Hell is wrong with these people?

Every minute that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (that’s you, Jim Cooper and John J. Duncan) spends on baseball is a minute that those Representatives could be spending trying to figure out a way to stop gunmen from marching into our universities and taking innocent, young lives.

Those are minutes that could be spent coming up with a real plan for Iraq. Or devising a way to provide healthcare for the poor that doesn’t bankrupt the country.

Every minute that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary spends tracking down Spygate is a minute that those Senators (Edward Kennedy, Orrin Hatch, Sam Brownback, Diane Feinstein, etc) could be spending trying to insure that Social Security still exists in 30 years. But instead, sports seems to be Number One on Congress’ agenda.

So how long before they start looking into all the cheating that goes on in NASCAR? When do the subpoenas arrive for Michael Waltrip and Ray Evernham? Has NASCAR destroyed “evidence” such as doctored-up restrictor plates?

When does Congress start looking at the rest of baseball? Clemens, who I’m no fan of, is getting buzzed by our representatives’ high-heaters, but there’s no additional digging into the stories of the ever-likeable Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Those two popular players were allowed to fake an accent (Sosa) and talk about the future (McGwire) before they were also allowed to tuck tail and run. And what of the hundreds of other players that we darn well know took advantage of baseball’s “look the other way” steroid policy of the 1990s?

When does Congress go after the rest of the NFL? The Boston Herald found that, during the same Super Bowl week in which a source claims the Patriots videotaped a Rams’ walk-through, NFL officials stopped a Patriots’ practice when they spotted an unknown man with a telescope spying on the Pats from a building overlooking their practice field. When does Congress dig into possible Rams’ cheating?

Former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson seems to think everybody does this stuff. “I mean everybody went to the edge on rules in one form or fashion. That’s just part of the game, that’s stealing the signals in baseball.” Ah, somebody put that on Congress’ to-do list: sign-stealing in baseball.

Johnson continued, “When I came into the NFL, I talked to a Kansas City scout and he said here’s what we do, ‘we videotape the opposing team’s signals and then we synch it up with the game film.’ So I did it. When I coached the Cowboys, we didn’t have this kind of scrutiny.” Uh-oh. Is Specter now going to dig into the Cowboys?

Want to know why Congress is so interested in sports? There are two reasons: pork and cowardice. Let’s start with pork.

Could Specter’s interest in the NFL have anything to do with the fact that Comcast was his number two source of campaign contributions in his last election?

And could his threat to undo the NFL’s anti-trust exemption (which would throw all of their TV rights up for grabs) have anything to do with Comcast’s on-going battle with the NFL over the NFL Network and their “Sunday Ticket” package? Surely not, that’s just a bunch of coincidences, right?

I mean, Specter really seems to believe Spygate is serious national business. After all, he has compared it to the CIA’s destruction of possible torture tapes. Of course, when it actually came to those destroyed CIA tapes, Specter kept his mouth shut and called for nary a hearing.

You know why? Reason number two: because he’s a coward.

Healthcare, the economy, Social Security, gun laws, the war … those are controversial issues. Talk about those things and you can lose votes. So these folks talk baseball and football instead.

“We have a right to honest football games,” Specter has said, quoting, I believe, Thomas Jefferson.

Well, tell that to those parents whose children were just murdered in Illinois. Tell that to the children whose parents won’t be coming back from Iraq.

Congress has a duty to every American citizen, including those currently fighting and dying overseas, to work to make all of our lives better and safer.

That means they shouldn’t waste our time and our money on frivolous investigations that serve as misdirection plays designed to keep them from having to make public decisions on controversial issues.

“Healthcare plan? What healthcare plan? Hey, did you hear I’m looking into golfers who turn in false scorecards!”

If you think I’m being disrespectful of our elected representatives, you’re right. You see, we choose them to represent us. We don’t owe them anything. They owe us. They owe us their very best.

These people have sworn to do their best for us … the elderly, the poor, the troops, the average citizen like you or me.

But when they talk sports instead of dealing with the real, difficult, controversial issues facing this nation? Well, to put it in terms they might understand, they strike out looking.

John Pennington hosts the Hall’s Salvage Sports Source on Sunday at 11 a.m. on WATE.