It just seems petty for them to appeal once a judge has ruled. They had their day in court. Let’s get on with the season.
Brady haters will always BELIEVE he cheated, but wont’s look at the evidence—there is no evidence that he did anything. I wouldn’t want to be tried in court with a jury made of Brady haters, as facts get in the way. Hatred of Brady has clouded their rational thought.
Typical is: 'Yeah, but he cheated, I just know it!!" Are they psychic?
New Englanders are called homers and fanboys for supporting Brady, but we’ve read all the reports. Chris Russo, a sports talk show host in NYC, calls Brady a cheater, but reluctantly admitted he didn’t read the Wells Report, Goodell’s report on the appeal, or Judge Berman’s ruling. Take the time, read the documents.
Chris Russo is all emotion. He never formed an opinion on anything based on factual information.
One of the big problems with the Brady case is that the initial information was wrong and that is the information that most people are basing their opinion on.
@romanigypseyeyes, I hadn’t heard “Ann Arbaugh” before. That’s pretty hilarious. Almost as funny as the picture of the Utah coach with the caption “Black is the new Khaki”. Funny, but not a proud moment in our football history.
Now I get to see how my other team does tonight. Fingers crossed for at least 10 wins.
@saintfan, I’m glad to see you’ve felt up to changing your avatar lately.
re: tomm1944’s second comment on faulty info:
NFL leaked incorrect info (“11/12” footballs grossly underinflated) and neither they nor the espn experts corrected the errors. Patriots asked nfl for clarification regarding what was accurate and what was not, and they received NO response. Kraft gave away the farm probably based on faulty info.
Misinformation. As in, the NFL didn’t know about the destroyed cell phone until the arbitration hearing which upheld the suspension. It didn’t factor into the suspension at all but was offered after-the-fact as a reason. And the main legal issue, as I pointed out at length, is the NFL had no authority to discipline him outside the rules of the CBA, that the CBA says the penalty for an equipment violation is a $5k fine (or so) and that Brady was disciplined under a policy given only to owners and not to players and which is not part of the players bargaining agreement and thus not part of the player discipline process.
As I noted, the NFL also refused to allow a very material witness to testify. I mention that because people often misstate the ruling: the judge has to respect the arbitration findings of fact and he did that, despite what commentators blather, but rather said the failure to allow testimony violated the fundamental fairness of the hearing process and violated every NFL internal and legal precedent. He also held that the NFL violated its own process by stating under oath that Brady was disciplined according to the findings of the Wells Report and then reversing that to say he knew and conducted a scheme, things that weren’t in the Wells Report. It’s elemental that you don’t change what you said under oath and even more fundamental that you can’t change the grounds for punishment after the fact. We even have a clause in the Constitution that speaks to abhorrence of after-the-fact punishment; the NFL in this case essentially enacted a “bill of attainder” by charging a person without informing him of the crime or the potential punishment and then changing the charges after stating under oath what they were to keep the punishment in place. Imagine if you were arrested and not told the charges and then convicted and punished and then, on appeal, they changed the charges! As a bonus, the Judge expressed barely veiled contempt for the decision to hire the so-called “independent” investigator as NFL counsel for the hearing. That’s an obvious conflict. I mention that because the one person who should lose his job is the NFL’s General Counsel, Pash: how could he allow any of this? As a lawyer, this is blunt, bleeping malpractice.
As to the underlying essence, people may believe there was ball deflation though I doubt it and the Judge doubts it and all the scientists I’ve read and spoken to doubt it. Brady never had a chance to question some of the assertions - e.g., if the referee remembers he used this gauge and you then say he didn’t, what is the basis of that decision other than you’re trying to find wrongdoing? If you took the referee’s testimony as true, nothing was wrong in the first place.
But anyway, if the NFL actually charts PSI this season, I think people will see that balls deflate in the cold and they’ll go “oh, yeah of course they do.” BTW, Tom Brady’s win-loss record home and away is: 90-15 at home and 70-34 away, including playoffs, which are difficult, often toss-up games. What does that say? Take Peyton Manning’s home and away: 98-30 home and 81-47 away. The road team has had control of the game footballs but Brady is clearly at least as good as Peyton on the road and seemingly better allowing for Peyton’s 47 more starts (and his 1st year 3-13 record). Note also that Peyton’s teams have been as successful as NE and seem to reflect games started, so they include losses where they may have started but left because the game was meaningless, wins they barely played in, etc.
To me, this episode shows that huge numbers of sports fans are poor losers. I’ve had the weird formation used against the Ravens brought up as “cheating”: it was not only legal but was used earlier in the season by at least one other NFL team. I’ve been told NE stole playbooks, something that has never even been alleged. Or that they were caught manipulating kicking balls, something that is true of other teams but not of NE (and the episode confused involved NFL employees who were stealing the kicking balls to sell). In fact, outside of Marshall Faulk’s absurd rants that NE taped the Super Bowl practices - which the NFL says never happened and couldn’t have happened - the only allegation of actual cheating was half of the 1st quarter of the 1st game of the 16-0 season when they were caught taping the Jets’ signals. That was the only actual cheating done because that practice was absolutely legal until that season when taping was restricted - by league memo - to a few specific locations and not allowed from field level. But all you hear is “a history of …” and what exactly is that history?
Note also the Jets have been disciplined for actual cheating: altering kicking balls and impeding a player on the field during a play AND - this is weird - they have had at least one camera on the field but have said they can do that as long as they don’t tape the other side’s signals and that is done on an honor system! And note this entire PSI thing came up because there was a Jets game in NYC in which the footballs (which the Jets had some control over) were overinflated to something like 16PSI, which is a lot and which Brady complained about. So my guess is they cheated, that they wanted to slow down the NE offense and they got the balls under their control over-inflated. That used to be called “gamesmanship” and it’s apparently ok if the team that does it isn’t NE.
There has been real cheating in baseball with teams organizing telescopes and radios to steal signs. And the NY Giants were suspected of real cheating in the playoffs one year by listening into offensive play calls as they were radioed in.
^^Bravo, Lergnom.
Jeesh: Those Brady haters sure are positive that he cheated! It could NOT have been anything else. Puulease.
Rex Ryan has admitted that he is jealous of Belicheck’s wins. So what does he do? He makes sure that NE is fined for “videotaping”. Because NO other team or player has ever done anything questionable, right?
And NE is the only team that has cheated or has cheating players, right? (Probably way less than others!)
I’m looking forward to season opener with Brady on the field. Enough. Time to move on.
The HC of the NYJ during Spygate was Eric Mangini, not Ryan.
This site is run by a Pats fan, but it is awesome nonetheless:
[Your Team Cheats* - The definitive guide to NFL cheating](http://yourteamcheats.com/)
^^Thanks, notrichenough. I stand corrected.
The link you posted is funny.
I guess there will always be Brady haters as well as any other quarterback…I just enjoy watching the games, all of them, NFL that is. I don’t have interest at the college level these days, although I did see some awesome moves by Auburn in the last year or so!
As a chemist and someone very knowledgeable re: the ideal gas law (PV = nRT), now that the league is finally “writing stuff down” regarding ball pressure, let’s not be shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, when it is discovered that during September games in Miami and Tampa, where the game time temp may be in the 90’s, ball pressure will go UP, just as it goes DOWN in NE and Green Bay in December. Damn, isn’t science amazing???
FYI, most people probably aren’t aware that a few weeks ago, ESPN issued an apology to the Patriots for referring to the idiotic claims the Patriots taped the Rams’ Super Bowl walkthrough in 2002. (This is a relatively frequent rant by sore loser Marshall Faulk.)
[url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/08/20/media/4aUkteNT9S2NhL0hRMEiKM/story.htmlHere is a story. Here is an excerpt:
"In a statement, Rob King, ESPN senior vice president, “SportsCenter” and news, elaborated somewhat on why the correction was made.
“On two occasions recently — in an onscreen graphic and in an anchor’s unscripted remarks — ‘SportsCenter’ incorrectly referenced an inaccurate 2002 newspaper account regarding the New England Patriots and Super Bowl XXXVI,’’ said King. “We strive to be accurate in all of our reporting and fair to those we cover. Thus, we took steps to ensure that this error won’t happen again, and we deemed it necessary to make a public apology to the Patriots organization.”"
Also, I heard part of an interview with Goodell this AM. The weirdest part was his absolute distortion of the attempt to equate this to steroids. He acts and talks as though there is no collective bargaining agreement, that he can simply make up rules and apply them to players.
I wish we could get an alert to let us know when this thread actually starts talking about football vs. being a Tom Brady thread. Maybe it is and I’ve just had the misfortune to check the thread only when deflategate is being discussed.
Are we allowed to talk about high school football at all? This incident happened in central Texas this weekend:
http://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2015/09/07/football-players-suspended-referee-attack-newday.cnn
I keep reading that there needs to be an investigation done in order to find out what “instigated” this attack, as if there could actually be anything that ref did or said which would justify the actions of the players. If the ref turns out to have been verbally abusive to the players, unfair in his previous calls, etc., that still in no way makes what happened okay. Allegedly the ref is in favor of filing criminal charges. Comments I’ve read suggest that many think that the refs know there is risk when the step onto the filed, therefore keeping discipline within the league rather than in the criminal arena is the best course of action.
I think there should be a new thread for this season, if only to cleanse the palate.
As for the Texas thing, if I were the ref I’d insist these kids be kicked off the team and suspended from school. I don’t know about the rules in TX but you sign forms when you ref and those will generally include statements about risk and not suing but they don’t include, can’t include legally intentional acts to hurt a person. There is no way under law that you can sign away your right to sue for future intentional acts. They aren’t negligent. They aren’t unintentional accidents or byproducts of the game but intentional, willful acts made with what is called “mens rea” meaning actual mental intent. So if I were the ref, I’d insist on absolute penalties or I’d sue the heck out the kids and their school.
I, for one, cannot wait for the regular season to begin in the NFL.
(Sing with me) It’s the most… wonderful time… of the year.
Last (I hope) post on this but read the ESPN “throw everything at the wall” article about the Patriots. It’s hilarious. It includes stuff like - to paraphrase - one AFC team brings its own sports drinks because the ones provided by the Patriots were either warm or delivered late or both, which then concludes with the word “Unethical?” Funny stuff. As Mike Florio pointed out just a minute ago, ESPN likes to get attention by pumping out garbage just before the season, noting they did the same thing to Pittsburgh as they were about to start after winning the Super Bowl with an article about a team doctor and illegal drugs.
Non video version of the high school story: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/07/us/texas-football-official-hit/
“As a chemist and someone very knowledgeable re: the ideal gas law (PV = nRT), now that the league is finally “writing stuff down” regarding ball pressure, let’s not be shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, when it is discovered that during September games in Miami and Tampa, where the game time temp may be in the 90’s, ball pressure will go UP, just as it goes DOWN in NE and Green Bay in December. Damn, isn’t science amazing???”
Yeah, it is, and leaving out whether Brady is involved or not, given the game time temperatures and the temperature in the locker room, if the measured values for the pressure were accurate, then the delta in temperature was not the cause. More importantly, the judge did not rule that the balls were not tampered with, the judge ruled that the case against Brady was bogus. No one is arguing that pressure doesn’t vary with temperature given other factors don’t change, but the amount of loss if the pressure was measured correctly was not the ideal gas law (which, as its name implies, is for an ideal gas that doesn’t exist, Helium and Neon and Argon are close, but the mix of gasses that make up our atmosphere are not going to be close to ideal, lots of molecular interactions and such, if I remember my basic chemistry known as Vanderwahl’s contractions and so forth that the real formulas take into account). Not to mention that I doubt the equipment guy took the bag of balls into the restroom for company while he did his business, more like he took the balls in to take a leak (I couldn’t resist).
That said, NE was fined for the tampering, which was correct, and I think the Brady decision was the right one, this was a case of Goodell trying to establish himself as supreme dictator and it flopped. It was really a mountain over a molehill, this wasn’t a case of inadvertent tampering (in the example someone gave, of the kicker’s ball with the Jets, an equipment guy had some kind of pads on his fingers to protect them, which the NFL claim led to the ball being scuffed up and was ‘inadvertent’ tampering, even they didn’t claim it was deliberate). My take on this should be the people running the NFL and the NFLPA should get together to modify the CBA and codify the rules, once and forever, and have some kind of structured process to figure these things out. Goodell pulling penalties and rules out of thin air isn’t the answer, and having penalties written down protects both players and the league from arbitrary rulings. You won’t have the idiocy of Brady suspended 4 games for a tampering charge, while the mutts who beat someone up, are part of a crime, get off with a couple of day suspension if anything at all, if they have rules, procedures, this won’t happen.
And in leaving this, let the fun begin. I am waiting for another fun season of NY Jets football, who gets arrested, and when Geno Smith returns, just how many ways he can foul up and lose games (as you can tell, I have been a fan for a long, long time). Have my fantasy draft tonight, see if my team can extend our winning streak. we are league champs for 3 years running:).
^ Can Curtis Martin un-retire? hehe
Sigh. This is my life. I foresee weekends ahead with me screaming myself hoarse or just sitting in disgust. It’s pretty hard to top the butt fumble, but the Jets may just be capable of it.
I don’t understand how people can be Jets fans. I used to think of their organization as terminally or repeatedly incompetent but when the NYT did a long article about how the team - and not the Giants - allowed mass sexual harassment of women at games I decided the entire organization is worth only rooting against.