This is the 3rd snowiest winter. 1996-7 was the most. We may get there. I really hope not.
I now call this Siberia on the Charles.
saintfan - Bravo. Seattle people’s spirit is so high.
The Packers recently fired their special teams coach, and have now cut Brandon Bostick, who (in)famously misplayed the on-side kick at the end of the NFC Championship.
It’s the No Forgiveness League for sure.
The NFL really should start a humor show starring Roger Goodell as inept CEO. Last night I heard that a Patriots ball guy handed a game official an unapproved kicking ball, which the official rejected because they check for their marking. (And which was described darkly as “tried to introduce an unapproved ball” into the game.) This was described as very unusual, that it’s not normal for a ball guy to hand the ball to an official and I heard questioning why this guy was “on the field”. I went to the movies late this afternoon to get out of the snow - and away from the Bobcat reducing our snow mountain - and heard a rather long bit (from ESPN’s Outside the Lines) in which a former official described seeing a Patriots ball guy - same guy? - talking to Belichick a few times on the sidelines (not knowing what was said of course) and being around the coaching box and being near Tom Brady after the Super Bowl. All that kind of dark suspicion people want to create. I get out of the movie and turn on the radio and hear the evening guys play Adam Schefter doing a report that this is something the NFL’s own employees “created”: one NFL employee has apparently been taking balls from games that are supposed to be bagged up for charity donations and selling them instead AND another NFL employee checked the kicking balls and found one was missing so he got another ball (from where is unclear) and gave it to the Patriots guy to give to the officials. There also may have been a 3rd NFL employee involved.
Remember when people talked about NFL Security as though they were equivalent to FBI and CIA combined? They’re more like a bleeping clown car.
ESPN also looks like a clown car. Yesterday they ran with this story about how the bad kicking ball led to a higher up NFL official coming down and investigating ball pressures and today it turns out there’s video of NFL employees handing not one but two balls to the Patriots ball boy to pass on not to a game official but to the guy who gives the ball to a game official. So they got even the little details wrong. I note that ESPN now has the story up. Here’s the gist:
"The unapproved kicking ball that sources told “Outside the Lines” that a Gillette Stadium officials’ locker room attendant tried to introduce into the AFC Championship Game was handed to the man by an NFL official, a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Wednesday.
The source said one of the “K balls,” which are used only for special-teams play, went missing, and an NFL official in charge of collecting balls for charity gave another ball to Jim McNally, who works the officials’ locker room at Patriots games.
McNally then gave it to Greg Yette, an alternate official who was in charge of putting the K balls into play. When Yette saw that ball did not have the pregame marking that referee Walt Anderson had put on the ball, he became suspicious and alerted NFL officials in the press box, a source told “Outside The Lines.”
A source told Schefter that the man in charge of collecting balls for charity has been fired by the league for selling the footballs meant for charity for a profit over a period of time.
The source said that a different NFL official also handed a ball to an equipment manager to be passed along to Yette later in the game.
The source said the NFL has video of the ball being given to McNally and the equipment manager, and that video is part of attorney Ted Wells’ investigation into accusations that the Patriots used underinflated footballs in the first half of their 45-7 win over the Indianapolis Colts that sent them to the Super Bowl."
Surprise Surprise Surprise.
And, if an NFL sideline official will steal a game ball to sell for $100, why are we to assume that he wouldn’t take a $100K bribe to fix a game? It’s the integrity of the game, right Roger? What do we tell the children, Roger?
Oh, and it is also come out that NFL VP of Operations tampered with 11 game footballs at halftime, adjusting their inflation. Totally against the NFL rules which give the Referee the sole authority over game balls, not an NFL executive who was President of the NY Jets before taking his League job.
I love the way the Pats and Belichick are twisting the knife slowly here, responding to each league source leak with a leak of their own (and making it clear to Shefter they have video of the corrupt NFL official on the sidelines). I think I mentioned a while back that Bill Belichick was unlikely to bend over and take it a second time from Roger Goodell.
BTW, here’s a YouTube of Shefter’s original on-air report. Just amazing:
It’s mind-blowing in another sense: ESPN gets a leak one day, puts together a big story, attaches the credibility of a reporter to that … and before 24 hours have passed, other leaks completely destroy that story, do damage to that reporter (and ESPN) and this is reported on ESPN! What the heck?
Boo hoo hoo. Now the NFL Game Officials union says their reputation has been tarnished and is demanding an apology.
Get in line…
Oh, well then, mystery solved. Btw how is the league’s Deflategate “investigation” coming along? I haven’t heard a word about it since the Super Bowl.
As of last week, the NFL “investigators” had not interviewed Tom Brady or Bill Belichick. It appears they aren’t in any hurry to move things along.
The NFL officials heard Schefter say official and went nuclear rather than saying, “Please clarify you meant an NFL employee, not a game official.” Schefter used both words. That the officials released a statement that harsh shows another side of the NFL’s inept management.
@interesteddad That’s what I thought. So much for their speedy and transparent investigation.
The game officials can save their indignation until after they have answered for their own behavior in this whole sorry affair. For example, why did they allow an executive from the league office (Mike Kensil, former Pres. of the NY Jets) to tamper with the game balls at halftime? The rulebook is very clear that the referee has the sole responsibility for the game balls. Did someone pay the officials or the executive to alter the game balls in the hopes of influencing the outcome of the game?
After all, it’s the integrity of the game at stake here, right? What do we tell the children?
Interesteddad, you should cut the guy a break. If the league official was from the Jets, he may not have understood how the game was supposed to be played.
He was with the Jets when Bill Belichick resigned as HC of the NYJ - his infamous resignation letter scribbled on a napkin…
Since we have determined that the footballs are sancrosanct, I think it’s legitimate to ask why he tampered with the Pats game balls at halftime of the AFC championship game.
And the a**clown symphony continues:
- Colts GM says they informed the NFL before the game of inflation concerns. Except the NFL says this came up during the game. And if they were informed, then why didn't they write anything down? Why not write down what the balls were at during the game and then during halftime? And if the Colts said this to the NFL, this calls into doubt their denial that they tampered with the ball they had in their possession, given reports that it was deflated more than the others.
- Per Mike Florio - so it's even less reliable than much of what we've read - the Patriots started the whole "introduced ball" thing when they noticed the ball for the first extra point wasn't marked with a K. Florio says part of the story is the fired guy took the K ball from the opening kickoff - cleverly marked K1. That means somehow there was a mistake along the way and both the sideline NFL people and the game officials didn't realize they'd gone to a different ball than K1 or K2. More idiocy. But then it's from Florio so it's perhaps partly true.
So after all this (and lord knows how many billable hours from Ted Wells), the Colts/NFL sting operation to nab the big bad Patriots has netted:
a) a confession from Jerry Rice that he cheated for his entire career
b) an NFL employee stealing game balls to sell on Ebay.
Heckuva job there, Rog…
They really don’t want to find any more dirt on the team that just “won” the SuperBowl. Because what do they do then?
Bingo, @cosmicfish . Deflategate is just quietly disappearing. If I were a Pats fan and I were so sure that my team did nothing wrong, I think I’d be mad about that.
More dirt? I’m not sure what you mean. The Pats haven’t done anything wrong.
In fact, it would appear that the Pats are the ONLY entity who hasn’t done anything wrong in this whole sorry affair (unless you count the leak that an NFL employee had been fired and that the team had turned over video of him stealing a game ball). 
Then let’s have the full report on the “investigation.”