The National Football League — particularly commissioner Roger Goodell — was hoping last Tuesday's meeting with former New England Patriots video man Matt Walsh would put an end to the entire Spygate controversy.

Despite pleas by Goodell of having no where else to turn after talking to 50-some people, the matter will never really be over.

That's the harsh reality the NFL will have to live with forever.

Thanks, Bill Belichick.

The Patriots coach had said he didn't know taping signals was wrong, even though Walsh had said Belichick told him to make sure no one knew.

The deeper you delve, the more seedy this can become and I'm sure a lot more damage could be dug up.

I really don't care about that. Teams that were taped, including the Steelers, didn't gain anything, but New England gained an unfair advantage.

Goodell hit the Patriots and Belichick with as much as he could — a first-round draft pick as well as a league maximum $500,000 fine against Belichick.

All the intangibles and details could come to light for years and Goodell has said he would revisit any additional charges if more evidence comes forward.

But it's too late.

The reputation of the NFL took a hard hit, one from which it very well might never recover.

As with most sports leagues, particularly the NBA, there are always conspiracy theories that games are fixed and outcomes are decided ahead of time.

I don't subscribe to those, but credibility is a hard thing to try to reclaim.

The NFLwas the unparalleled leader of the four major sports leagues. Strike-free for two decades, plenty of money for owners, coaches, players — a beacon of what a league should be.

Now, thanks to New England, the very fiber of what was good is now tainted.

Supposedly, many teams have been videotaping other teams' signals. Teams have just looked away or said nothing. Now, it's exposed for what it is: a dirty part of the game.

With any game where a good team is in total control of another good team, you know you'll start to wonder: "How did they know that play was coming?" or "What a great call on that play. No one ever would have tried that."

You know in the back of your mind your thoughts will start to go there. And the league doesn't want that.

By putting its foot down and trying to put an end to this sad chapter, the NFL might leave a lot more questions unanswered.

Do you think 50 or 75 years from now, The Steroid Era (1998-2005) of baseball will be forgotten?

It won't.

Historians won't allow it, but neither will public opinion, and that's worse. There will be no asterisks in the baseball record books and there won't be any next to the Patriots' three Super Bowl titles or Tom Brady's passing records.

My guess is this will be a dark part of NFLhistory, no matter how much it tries to overlook it.