The three hour meeting between Roger Goodell and former New England Patriots videotape assistant Matt Walsh adjourned shortly before the 11:00 o'clock hour this morning. Walsh left the meeting without talking to reporters while his lawyer, Michael Levy, supplied the 50 or so media members present with a brief report on what he felt they accomplished by pursuing this meeting, as well as what they'll be up to for the rest of the day - the two will be heading to Washington D.C. to speak with Senator Arlen Specter. (Side note - Do our United States senators really have nothing better to do than meddle in the various affairs of professional athletics? Can we form some sort of citizens' committee to investigate why so many of our elected officials do so little work? Am I the only one who thinks about such things? And yet, I digress.) Shortly following the conclusion of the meeting, Goodell issued a press conference in which he discussed what he felt were the two paramount issues of this entire saga - the alleged St. Louis Rams Super Bowl walkthrough, and whether or not Walsh actually had any new information. Goodell concluded, "The fundamental information that Matt provided was consistent with what we penalized the Patriots for." Shocking; we'd been hearing for weeks that Walsh was a borderline phony and it takes the league this long to confirm those facts? In addition, Goodell verified that there never existed a videotape of a Super Bowl walkthrough, no one asked Walsh to tape the Rams, Walsh was unaware of anyone else taping them, and he had never seen a videotape of that nature. In short, no new information regarding the Patriots' videotaping practices (except for the humorous fact that there were apparently a few pervs under the employ of the Pats as reports have the tapes containing a few close-ups of San Diego Chargers cheerleaders among the signal calling of opposing teams) was discovered. All I have to say is, can we please get the last 8 months of our lives back?

I guess this modern day witch-hunt wasn't totally fruitless in the long run; after all, Goodell said he'd learned that a player on IR was practicing (which, uh, you're not supposed to do if you're placed on injured reserve) and that Walsh was involved in the scalping of 8-12 player tickets for Super Bowl games over a two year period (which is, uh, illegal). Big freaking deal. Marvin Harrison is implicated in a shooting involving a gun with armor-piercing rounds, Michael Vick owes the Canadian Bank $2.4 million for defaulting on a loan, the Ravens were involved in a full-team brawl at minicamp a few days ago, Bengals players make headlines for the wrong reasons every week, and the big news today is that an injured Patriots player was spotted practicing while on IR and several Patriots-issued player tickets found their way into fans' hands? Give me a break. No doubt these bits of semi-controversial, mostly-irrelevant information will provide the naysayers and detractors a last bit of ammunition with which they may continue attacking the Patriots for the next few weeks. After that, it'll be back to business as usual... at least until Week 1, when the first writer, reporter, analyst or commentator obligatorily utters the word "Spygate" while referring to the Pats' historic 2007-08 season.