There's something a bit unsettling about the rush to judgement here.
I caught the Sports Reporters Sunday, and to listen to these guys, you'd think they caught Brady and the equipment guy on video sucking the air out of the balls and taking selfies of themselves.
There's an interesting story over at Breitbart Sports that does a pretty good job of showing what looks like a witch hunt was in place.
As writer Daniel J Flynn points out, it looks like the investigator took an approach similar to Climate Scientologists in the case -- that is, he had a forgone conclusion and interpreted evidence and innuendo in a way that made his case.
As Flynn points out, all of the game balls were underinflated at halftime. And the equipment guy, Jastremski, pointed out that the referees had a habit of over-inflating balls by as much as 2.5 psi before games.
All of the balls — Patriots balls and Colts balls — lost pressure by halftime. Significantly, the 11 Patriot balls showed greater decreases than the four Colt balls tested. More significantly, judging by what the scientists employed by Wells told him, eight of the 11 balls tested at halftime fell within the expected range of pressure drop based on the measurements of at least one of the two NFL officials who gauged the pigskins. This, more than anything else, invalidates the conclusions of the Wells Report. Though Ted Wells theorizes a conspiracy to depressurize balls, measurements by NFL referees on the majority of the Patriots balls read precisely where the scientific firm employed by the investigators said a ball inflated to 12.5 psi–the NFL minimum–would fall to (between 11.52 and 11.32) as a result of game-time conditions.
It is important to note here -- the final inflation figure of 11.5 - 11.3 is one pound under the minimum. I would defy anyone to recognize a one pound variation of inflation in a football. In fact, one of our local sports guys did just that on television and said he couldn't detect any difference.
The report is also filled with a lot of e-mails and communications between various figures around the supposed conspiracy that don't actually say or prove anything. Mostly they seem included to damage the image of the team and members of it. The fact that Brady wouldn't simply open up his cell phone or computer to the investigator is implied as a sign of guilt. It's a conviction based on innuendo and little actual evidence. I'm not even sure that this would qualify as circumstantial in a court of law.
Like I said, I don't have a dog in this fight. Frankly, I'm a Drew Bledsoe fan. I always thought he got short shrift from the organization and the fans who have forgotten how he almost literally carried a woeful team on his back for years -- over 44,000 yards passing, 251 tds, 77.1 qb rating. Only losing his job to injury to the current qb Tom Brady.
I think this is a witch hunt. The Patriots are the team everyone loves to hate. And I think destroying Tom Brady's legacy to satisfy this jealousy is wrong. Plain and simple.
Update:
News out this afternoon is that Brady got a four game suspension and the Pats were fined $1mil and two draft picks.
Hmmm . . .
Ray Rice is on video punching his wife, knocking her out cold and dragging her out of an elevator. He admitted to doing this and received a two game suspension. There's no evidence that Brady had anything to do with the deflated footballs other than using them in a game, and he receives a four game suspension.
Maybe he should have just beat the sh*t out of his wife instead, filmed it with his cell phone. That way he'd only miss two games. Plus his team wouldn't be financially penalized.
Seems a bit uneven in the discipline department in my opinion.
News out this afternoon is that Brady got a four game suspension and the Pats were fined $1mil and two draft picks.
Hmmm . . .
Ray Rice is on video punching his wife, knocking her out cold and dragging her out of an elevator. He admitted to doing this and received a two game suspension. There's no evidence that Brady had anything to do with the deflated footballs other than using them in a game, and he receives a four game suspension.
Maybe he should have just beat the sh*t out of his wife instead, filmed it with his cell phone. That way he'd only miss two games. Plus his team wouldn't be financially penalized.
Seems a bit uneven in the discipline department in my opinion.
And for no other reason than I have the picture, here's Scarlett Johansson's ass in spandex on the set of the new Avengers movie:
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