Tom Brady's Balls

Apparently, Tom Brady and staff had  4 hours [lasted over 11 hours] to present their appeal case to the current high commissioner of NFL football. This happening has been called “deflategate” by the press. Did Brady have a hand in the so-called deflating of footballs in the AFC championship game? According to NFL rules, a fine of $25,000 is punishment for tampering with footballs. That $25,000 fine is not what the NFL punished Tom Brady and his Patriot team. The NFL Commissioner acted as judge and jury, and handed out a non-commensurate fine of suspensions, millions of dollars, and loss of draft picks.

There was an enlightening article in the June 14, 2015 edition of The New York Times written by authors associated with the American Enterprise Institute. This impartial group made its mark when it evaluated “Bountygate” in 2012. According to the NFL, the New Orleans Saints were guilty of offering bounties that resulted in injury to opposing football players on other teams. To make a long story short, the data collected by the NFL indicated just the opposite. In fact, in 2009, the New Orleans Saints ranked either at number 30 or number 31 on the list of injuring other players- in other words, they were at the bottom of the 32 team league. That evidence was presented to the High Commissioner and the New Orleans Saints suspensions were quickly vacated the following month.

The impartial American Enterprise Institute evaluated the non-impartial Ted Wells report [he was paid $3 million for his deflategate investigation]. The summary per the American Enterprise Institute: 1. The referees used two different air pressure gauges. This is significant because these gauges did not measure PSI equally. 2. Each team provided its own footballs. 3. A football exposed to the cold weather conditions have a lower PSI compared to a football in a warm heated room -it has a higher PSI. 4. All 11 “cold weather” Patriot footballs were measured.  Only 4 “room heated “Indianapolis Colt footballs were measured. 5. Referees did not remember which air pressure gauge were used to measure any of the footballs. 6. The Patriot balls were measured in the cold temperature- deflated [PSI] by about the expected statistical significance. 7. On the other hand, when the Colts balls were measured the PSI measurement - were statistically higher than expected. In other words, statistically significant, the changes in air pressure of the two teams balls was not because the pressure of the Patriot balls were too low, but because the Colts balls were too high. 8.It’s more than likely that the Patriots began the game with their footballs that had too little air. 9. Unfortunately, the Wells report did not address points 1 through 8.

So Brady was expected to prove his innocence. I naïvely thought that the burden of proof was on the accuser. How silly was my thinking. Because the High Commissioner did not recluse himself, how impartial and transparent is Roger?  After all, he paid Ted Wells $3 million and Wells was expected to defend his “more probable than not” conclusion that the Patriots footballs were deliberately doctored, thus breaking an NFL rule.

This current information suggests that a sloppy and inaccurate evaluation regarding the footballs was made by Wells. Not only that, the cold-warm conditions, the PSI measuring devices, the referees measuring all 11 footballs from one team, and only 4  from the other, and the referees, not knowing there were PSI gauge differences and they didn’t care to remember which gauges  were used on which football was not considered. Is this a bad dream?

High Commissioner Roger states that he’s all about defending the integrity of the NFL. I don’t believe that for one minute. He’s more concerned about defending his integrity and keeping his multimillion dollar job. Well, he can do that by changing his stripes regarding the over-the-top punishments. If he doesn’t, I would fire him and ask Wells to return the 3 million. Otherwise, there seems to be an apparent collusion between Roger G and Ted W. And, they’re just covering their own asses. Thank goodness there was an impartial group that evaluated this $3 million boondoggle.