Matt Walsh’s Question-Begging

ESPN.com’s Matt Fish has perhaps just broken the sports Watergate that could threaten the legitimacy of the New England Patriots’ dynasty.

Fish tracked down former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh, who claims that he (possibly) has the goods on illegal videotaping practices which, by very nature of when Walsh worked for the Patriots (1996-2003), proceed SpyGate by years.

Whatever Walsh knows, though, he’s not telling; he has no motivation to. "I'll be honest with you,” Walsh told ESPN.com. “I can't really be guilted into anything," he said. "Maybe… you don't think I have a conscience because of the people I was exposed to and what they had me doing,” he continued, but “really, I just [have] no incentive to really talk to anybody, no reason to do it. For me, personally, I haven't really been able to see the gain in doing it."

But listen to Walsh’s words closely. At the surface Walsh claims he “has nothing to gain” from speaking out about New England’s videotaping practices during his 7-year stint with the Patriots. But read between the lines and it appears that Walsh is either (a) attempting to stir up the waters into a book/interview deal that would make a violation of his non-disclosure agreement with New England – which he claims would put his family, with its deep New England roots, in jeopardy, “worth his while” or (b) begging Senator Arlen Specter (PA), ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to subpoena him to Capitol Hill to spill his guts, thereby “leaving him no choice” but to drop dime on his former employer.

If Walsh were truly concerned with maintaining an image of loyalty to his former employer, he wouldn’t have gone on the record with Fish and ESPN.com. Pictures of Walsh and his new life as an “assistant golf pro” wouldn’t appear in the article, and he wouldn’t say things like:

“There are lots of stories there. [New England Patriots director of football research Ernie Adams] told me stories of things they used to do in Cleveland [where Adams assisted Belichick with the Browns]."

Or: "If I had a reason to want to go public or tell a story, I could have done it before this even broke. I could have said everything rather than having [Eric] Mangini be the one to bring it out."

Article Author: James David Dickson

James David Dickson is the Collegiate Network Fellow at The American Spectator.

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