What's the prize for protecting the league's sexiest quarterback? Well, if you're willing to slum it in Hyannis Port for the Audi Best Buddies Challenge, a charity event that raises money for individuals with intellectual disabilities, and has Tom Brady as the honorary chairman (and celebrity ambassador!), it's an Audi Q7 SUV.

So congrats, Dan Koppen, Logan Mankins and Stephen Neal, you're the big winners.

"Now you'll be well protected, just like you make me feel . . . sometimes," Brady cracked, glancing over at his linemen ...

Koppen added more perspective. "Tom's so good to us," he said. "To present it in this form makes it the best. It's not really about the cars, which will be nice to have. The more important thing is he's out here supporting Best Buddies, an organization that's really close to my heart. So it's tremendous for him to be here."

You know, it's becoming increasingly difficult to dislike Brady, what with the charities, the free wheels, and endless drink tabs. Nick Kaczur and Matt Light -- the two linemen who won't be rolling in complimentary Audis anytime soon -- might feel differently. Of course, Brady could be sending them a message (with all the subtlety of a 2X4 to the head): "We lost the Super Bowl because I was sacked five (FIVE?!?) times. Thanks, jerks. Hope the T goes to Foxboro."

Or maybe Koppen, Mankins and Neal got cars because they showed up at the charity event. Definitely one or the other, though.

As FanHouse's Ryan Wilson noted, the transcript of the CBS News interview with New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was written in ALL CAPS, as if Belichick had shouted his answers. As it turns out, the video shows more sneering than shouting:

Belichick had a look of contempt on his face as he described Matt Walsh, the former Patriots video assistant who has been the central figure of the Spygate story of the last three months. But he did admit that he screwed up.

"I made a mistake," Belichick said. "It was wrong. I was wrong."

The Boston Globe's Mike Reiss got his hands on part of the transcript of Bill Belichick's interview with CBS Evening News, and he kindly posted it on his blog. Here's what Belichick told interviewer Armen Keteyian when asked about Matt Walsh:

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT HIS AGENDA IS, AGAIN, HE WAS FIRED FOR POOR JOB PERFORMANCE AND FOR AUDIO TAPING HIS SUPERIOR. THERE'S NOT A LOT OF CREDIBILITY. YOU KNOW HE'S TRIED TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE WE'RE BUDDIES, AND BELONG TO THE SAME BOOK CLUB AND ALL. THAT'S REALLY A LONG, LONG STRETCH."

"FOR HIM TO TALK ABOUT GAME PLANNING AND STATEGY [sic] AND PLAY CALLING AND HOW HE ADVISED COORDINATORS, IT'S EMBARRASING [sic], IT'S ABSURD. HE DIDN'T HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF FOOTBALL. HE WAS OUR THIRD VIDEO ASSISTANT.'

(I'm not sure if CBS distributes all transcripts in all caps, or if Belichick was yelling. I'm going with the latter, but it's probably worth watching the telecast for verification.)

I can't really blame Belichick for sounding angry -- he's had his good name sullied these past few months -- but I do think it's a bit much to start questioning other people's credibility since, you know, Roger Goodell did fine him $500,000 for cheating.

To Belichick's credit, when questioned about videotaping signals after the NFL's 2006 memo, he offered this response: "I made a mistake. I was wrong. I was wrong." Now all that's left if for senator Arlen Specter to hold a press conference to make sure we don't forget that he's busy attending to the people's business. And by "people" I mean "Comcast", of course.

New England Patriots President Jonathan Kraft appeared on the Boston radio station WEEI on Thursday and criticized the journalistic practices of several media outlets that have covered the Spygate controversy surrounding his team, including the Boston Herald, New York Times and ESPN.

His comments on ESPN were particularly interesting because they mark the second time this week that a high-profile person associated with the Patriots has ripped the Worldwide Leader. Tom Brady also criticized ESPN's coverage of Spygate, even as he acknowledged that he didn't watch that coverage.

On WEEI Thursday, Kraft was asked, "The New York Times and certain people at ESPN have kind of been out to get you. Do you know why? Do you understand why?" He answered:

Boston Herald reporter John Tomase, who wrote the explosive and since-retracted report that the Patriots taped the Rams' final walk-through practice before the 2002 Super Bowl, has written an explanation of how he got the story wrong.

Unfortunately, the explanation doesn't really explain much of anything. It's really more a timeline of his work on the story, and there are still key details that he doesn't make clear, like exactly how many sources he had and who they were.

So how did he get the story wrong? Basically, it comes down to this: "on the final, crucial point of whether the camera was actually rolling, I made a devastating leap of logic and assumed that's what I was being told rather than confirming it explicitly."

The early reaction seems to be that readers aren't satisfied, although when a writer makes a mistake this big I'm not sure there's anything he can say to satisfy his readers. Tomase, I'm sure, just hopes this is over. I'm not sure that it is.

More commentary at Fifth Down, Pro Football Talk and Boston Sports Media Watch.

Other than Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter's quest for the truth, most everybody else is done with Spygate. Even Mike Martz, the recipient of the Super Bowl XXXVI beatdown, courtesy of the then-upstart New England Patriots.

Today Martz released a statement through his current employer, the San Francisco 49ers, and offered this:

"I had the opportunity to talk to Commissioner [Roger] Goodell yesterday and I was very satisfied with the NFL's efforts to investigate the situation with Matt Walsh as it related to Super Bowl XXXVI. I'm very confident that there was no impropriety. I believed Bill Belichick when he said there wasn't and I took that at face value."

Martz added, perhaps to emphasize his point to certain single-minded individuals, that the Rams lost to the Patriots because they "turned the ball over three times." So that's that -- or at least it should be if not for that meddling busybody, Specter.

And while Martz is ready to move on from Spygate, he had some very pointed remarks for Walsh:

Dan Rooney is an NFL Hall of Famer, and while he may never be as beloved as his dad Art Rooney is in Pittsburgh (Mother Teresa is a distant second to The Chief in Pittsburgh), he has to be appreciated for keeping the Steelers competitive for much of the past three decades.

But we also to have to remember one thing. When it comes to NFL insiders Dan Rooney is right in the middle of the inner sanctum. He's the owner who lined up Roger Goodell as Paul Tagliabue's replacement. He's the owner who turned his own team in for a salary cap violation.

So when Goodell says that the NFL's investigation into Spygate has successfully been concluded and no further punishments will be coming, it's no surprise that Dan Rooney was one of the first to say that the Steelers are quite satisfied.

"We are satisfied with commissioner Goodell's conclusion that nothing significantly new was discovered about the Patriots' videotaping matter after this morning's meeting with Matt Walsh," Rooney said in a statement released by the Steelers. "The NFL did a thorough investigation that spanned several months."

It's been well established that senator Arlen Specter had ulterior motives for pursuing the NFL and the whole (not really) sordid Spygate saga: money. Specifically, helping the senator's biggest contributor, Comcast, get their greedy little mitts on a piece of the NFL Sunday Ticket pie.

Now that Matt Walsh has finally spilled the beans, Specter is calling for a Mitchell report-like investigation of the Patriots under the guise of doing the people's business. Problem is, nobody can find these "people" outside of Comcast headquarters. So while the rest of us are ready to get on with our lives, Specter continues his crusade against ... well, something.

Which, apparently, is enough to move Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy into action.

"With the war in Iraq raging on, gasoline prices closing in on $4 a gallon, and Americans losing their homes at record rates to foreclosure, the United States Senate should be focusing on the real problems that Americans are struggling with," Kennedy said through a spokesman in response to a question posed by a Globe reporter. "I'm looking forward to another great Patriots season where they can let their play on the field speak for itself."

Save that last sentence, Kennedy's views echo those of just about every other rational person who has commented on the alleged scandal in the last three months.

This doesn't take away from the fact that the Patriots were caught cheating, and that Bill Belichick might've misled Goodell. And while Goodell certainly has reasons for wanting Spygate to go away (for the children, of course), I'm pretty sure we don't need the U.S. Congress to help sort things out. Even if they had absolutely nothing else to do.

The New England Patriots have confirmed that they have no intention of suing the Boston Herald over the newspapers February 2 report that the team illegally taped the St. Louis Rams' final walk-through practice before the 2002 Super Bowl.

Patriots spokesman Stacey James told the Boston Globe that a lawsuit against the Herald "has been discussed" but that "I don't think we're pursuing that at this time."

A day after the Boston Herald apologized for its February 2 article saying the New England Patriots taped the St. Louis Rams' final practice before the 2002 Super Bowl, the paper's editor is both reiterating the apology and standing by the reporter who wrote the story.

In an editor's note in today's paper, Kevin R. Convey says he won't throw reporter John Tomase under the bus:

Nevertheless, I continue to stand behind the work of the Herald sports department and John Tomase, a talented journalist who has dealt with this difficult matter professionally while continuing to do his job under intense pressure.

In the end, as editor in chief of the Herald, I take full responsibility for the publication of this story, and I offer my own apology to our readers and our staff.

That statement would seem to indicate that the Herald plans to keep Tomase on the Patriots beat. I would expect the Patriots to make life difficult on him this year.