There is absolutely no cheering allowed in the press box. As much as I might wish to have a favorite team about which I can be emotional, biased and view with a complete lack of objectivity, because that's what many fans do, I can't. I'll guarantee there isn't one of you out there who loves pro football any more than I do, but the job demands I avoid being a fan, and so I do, or at least I try my best. And that's the best explanation I can come up with for why Arlen Specter chose to be a United States senator instead of a sportswriter. He apparently thinks his job allows him to butt into anything he wants, and he actually expects us to applaud him for it.

Normally a guy like Sen. Specter, from the state of Pennsylvania and the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has better things to do and would only be mentioned in Pro Football Weekly for making an illegal wager with a politician from another state prior to their teams meeting in a big game. Wait, I forgot gambling is only illegal for fans, not politicians. But it seems Sen. Specter has appointed himself as the lord-high ruler of anything he chooses, still hasn’t gotten over the Eagles’ loss to the Patriots in the Super Bowl XXXIX and has nothing better to do than tell NFL commissioner Roger Goodell how to do his job.

I promised myself I was done with “Spygate,” or whatever you want to call it. Done because the guilty parties have apologized and been punished severely, as they should have been. Done because not a single new fact or shred of evidence has emerged since those admissions and punishments took place. There are allegations by Matt Walsh, a former employee of the Patriots, that he has evidence of additional malfeasance, but to date he has refused to produce it, we’re told, because he is afraid of the potential recriminations from telling the truth. Am I the only one having a problem finding the real focus in that picture? Until we see the evidence or can at least verify its existence, what more is there to say? If it turns out Walsh is telling the truth and the Patriots’ chicanery was far worse than we realize so far, I say, fine, hang ’em all! But until then, can someone please explain to me what the hell this has to do with the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Best as I can tell from a visit to the committee’s own Web site, http://judiciary.senate.gov, the seven areas of focus of the committee are: (1) administrative oversight and the courts; (2) antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights; (3) the Constitution; (4) crime and drugs; (5) human rights and the law; (6) immigration, refugees and border security; and (7) terrorism, technology and homeland security. I imagine none of you is any more shocked than I failed to be that there is no subcommittee for monitoring NFL rules violations.

Still, Sen. Specter is outraged by the unwillingness of any number of NFL players, coaches and front-office personnel to respond to the inquiries from members of his staff or cooperate with his “investigation.” Perhaps it’s because they’re as outraged as I am, and every one of you should be, that our tax dollars are being wasted paying the salaries of his staff to butt into something that’s none of their freaking business.

I’m sure the senator will claim jurisdiction in this matter because of his committee’s oversight in the areas of antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights. Specter has mentioned on a number of occasions that the NFL has an antitrust exemption, while stopping short of saying that’s why he wants to investigate the matter. I assume that’s because he knows the NFL actually has a “limited antitrust exemption” as it relates to its right to negotiate broadcast rights for all of its 32 teams, and that there is no reasonable interpretation in the world that would suggest or defend the idea that the rules governing the playing of pro football games should come under the purview of that particular subcommittee.

Those of you who’ve followed this column for a while know that I am a political animal and well off the center. But my position here is completely nonpartisan. Republican or Democrat, please tell me you agree that while we are at war overseas and our veterans at home are in need, we’re on the brink of recession, near almost certain disaster in our Social Security and health-care systems, systematically destroying the only atmosphere we have to live in, our public education system is in decline, and we face a host of other problems that actually matter and whose answers elude us, every one of our elected officials must be focused on the job we elected them to do, rather than abusing the office we’ve granted them because their favorite team can’t win a Super Bowl!

Has Major League Baseball or its fans benefited in any way from the members of the House of Representatives’ bipartisan efforts to exploit baseball’s problems with steroids for their own TV face time? I don’t trust Roger Goodell blindly, and neither should you. But I have more than enough faith in him, and even more so in the egos of the NFL owners, that if the Patriots were cheating to gain an unfair advantage, the other 31 clubs are going to do something about it. And unlike Sen. Specter, they have the right.