Inflategate: The creation, though leaks by anonymous sources, of something sinister where little or nothing previously existed, in order to obliterate a perceived opponent.
The NFL should be investigated and so should should Roger (“Kenneth Starr”) Goodell for their attempted takedown of what may be the best team, coach, and quarterback of all time on the eve of the biggest game in their history.
Roger Goodell seems to be trying to ruin the game of football — he has certainly almost completed the job of ruining what may have been the last great season of the Belichick-Brady era. And for what? To save his own tattered reputation for his missteps in the Ray Rice video scandal?
Robert Kraft may have thought Goodell was a friend. But how many friends conduct sting operations on you? Kraft is right that the NFL owes the Patriots an apology.
The key question here is why is this all happening now, on the eve of this potentially historic game?
Why is “information” about the NFL “investigation” being continually leaked, and why now, given that this investigation is supposedly going to continue for several more weeks?
First, anonymous sources tell ESPN that 11 of 12 game balls were under-inflated. Yesterday, anonymous sources tell Fox News that the NFL is looking at a “person of interest” who took the balls into a separate room before bringing them out on the field. Today we learn from anonymous sources that the room was a bathroom.
I would hope the media, at least, would ask some of these questions of Goodell, but I’m not optimistic. The media have shown they just want to be Goodell’s abettors.
…but why do you think Goodell would be biased against the Patriots, especially if Kraft is a friend?
Arthur Miller could have written a kick ass play about “deflategate.”
n/t
Our pity party is confined to this region of the country, the other 31 teams and their fanbases hate us with a passion. I still think it comes down to the idea that the land of Dukakis and gay marriage somehow beat golden all American boys like Peyton and Luck on a consistent basis. And now we will take Wilson down too. This will blow over after the big game.
Deflating balls and recording the other team on the sideline to make opposition film, which every team was allowed to do prior to 2006, doesn’t give you three rings. Smart coaching, a smart quarterback who trains to be smart as well as tough, and dudes like Gronk who can’t be brought down and Wilfork who brings dudes down.
Belichick isn’t sentimental at all, he is focused solely on winning, which is what I thought coaches were supposed to do. Pretty sure they named the trophy after the guy who said ‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’. Pretty sure Vince never said ‘be nice to the media and have witty pressers’. Pretty sure Brady is better than Manning cause he tosses more footballs than pizzas in his spare time.
…than a team called Patriots, I would think.
Everybody hated the Cowboys when they were really good, especially after adopting the moniker “America’s Team”. If you are dominate for any amount of time, you get the haters.
Nonsense. The fact is, the Pats have been really good for really long. When you do that, you get haters. Just ask the Yankees. It has nothing to do with the location the Pats call home. Hell, I’ll bet half of the people who watch the Super Bowl can’t even tell you from what state the Patriots reside — and of those who could, a huge fraction certainly wouldn’t know Foxborough.
This isn’t red vs. blue. This is hating on a winner, plain and simple.
Of course, the fix is easy. A few years the NFL changed the rule from “home team provides balls” to “team on offense provides balls.” Change the rule again, to “officials provide balls.” Problem solved.
but they changed the system because quarterbacks were not happy with how they were being prepared and the officials really didn’t want to be responsible for it.
Perhaps we let the teams provide the balls but have an official set the pressure to 13psi. Either that or as I previously suggested, just relax the psi limit.
Having gone to a midwestern college with a ton of fans from other teams here are the common refrains:
I get a lot of ‘you’re not a real football team like we are *belch* da bears won in 85′ and won plenty of titles before the AFL was formed *belch*’
Or ‘the first and only titletown is Green Bay’
‘We were the original dynasty, and a bigger one with more titles’ -steelers, niners, or cowboys fans at various points.
‘Your QB bangs Brazilians and wears Uggs, my QB drives Buick, listens to outlaw country, and eats pizza like a real American’-Denver or Indy fan comparing that European style Brady to an All American like Peyton or Luck.
I got a ton of that. Lot of cultural animus towards New England having a good football team, a lot of Cowboys haters would still prefer the Big D over us for those reasons.
Of course you had to cheat to win all your games, no good football team ever came out of New England before.
This story wrote itself long before a football got deflated, the same losers like Trent Dilfer ready to write us off after Week 2 woulda had to eat crow, now all is right with the world and the narrative that manly QBs like Manning, Luck and maybe Wilson got robbed by ‘that pretty boy toy Brady’ can take full effect.
As a BMGer and a non-Pats fan, I gotta say I’m suspicious. I get everyone superceded the Sox as everyone’s favorite Boston team, but to me they behave an awful lot like investment bankers. It’s always “Oooh well we didn’t cheat, we just got caught breaking the same rules that everyone else does. It’s not even illegal!”
The simple fact of the matter is, two separate articles on Slate outline where the Pats and their plays-per-fumble ratio sits. Pre-2007 they were right in the pack with all the other non-dome teams.
However, since the 2007 rule change (that Peyton Manning was all about too) that allows teams to always supply their own balls (where previously all the balls were supplied by the home team) the Pats numbers are simply off the charts. They fumble half as often as the next closest team. Players that were on the Pats had low fumble totals and then left and their fumble totals returned to normal.
This Slate article breaks down pretty clearly that something very fishy is up.
Obviously all of this press is overblown, and not even Touchdown Jesus himself could have saved the Colts last week. But having said that, the Pats follow the rules the way the banks followed the rules, and to act like they’re the class of the NFL instead of its Goldman Sachs is just bullshit.
Here is a link to a supposed refutation of Warren Sharps analysis.
supply their own balls was at the behest of Brady and Manning. But have Brady’s passing numbers substantially improved since 2007? if the result of the rules change has been less fumbles, that’s not Brady’s or Manning’s department. Like a lot of other theories being tossed around to discredit the Patriots, this one seems to have some major logical holes in it. The stats that support the theory are trotted out, and the stats that don’t support it are ignored.
The author is not a professional statistician and clearly does not understand what he is doing. There is no way either article would make it past a peer-review board at any reputable scientific journal.
It is sad that anyone has to waste time refuting grossly bad science.
It didn’t even attempt at explaining how the Pats could cheat, if there were other causes that we’re either within the rules or could be accidental (as is the case with “deflategate,” given that mother nature deflated the balls).
We don’t need any more innuendo, particularly from someone with a username as offensive as yours.
And it’s surprising more people don’t realize it….a combo of having to fill the week with something & widespread hatred of the pats.
Also, those stats don’t mean what some think they do.
is pretty offensive. Do you really think the rest of this country is ignorant? I have spent lots of time in a dozen states and rarely encountered your stereotype of everyone else being right wing rednecks. And yes, I have lived in GA and TX.
It’s legacy teams hating us because we are good like stomv said, but also that we are upstarts. I live in the heart of the Bears-Packers rivalry and all those guys, many of them just a liberal, bash Tom as a pretty boy who wears uggs, bash is as cheaters or upstarts, and say we don’t deserve to be called title down. Ditto Steelers fans, ditto Manning fans, ditto Colts fans.
Our Saturday afternoons growing up weren’t devoted to ND or the Big 10 like theirs were. I might be over reading into the immature trash talking I’ve been subjected to (and don’t let get I me-my team wins championships your team deifies an asshat like Ditka and hasn’t innovated since he won thirty years ago). More reason to move back home I guess!
have left out the “land of Dukakis and gay marriage” shit. As it happens, I took a leave of absence from my job in 1988 and went to work as a volunteer for Dukakis in the deep South during the Presidential campaign and I did not run into that as often as you imply.
When red state residents express disdain for us, usually it is because of the imperious attitude you just dumped on the whole country.
Sorry
cool
It’s easy to think it’s cultural when you read the insulting and stereotyping posts from MA liberals about football players and football fans. Some people are addicted to drunken, worthless, cheating losers like the Red Sox, popular with the intelligentsia for decades BECAUSE they lost – see, aren’t these athletic types CUTE? SO fun how they seem to care about these silly sports, unlike the worthwhile pursuits of the cognoscenti.
No, it’s about trying to get a good color story out of the Pats.
The discipline is unreal – on and off the field, the players do not speak unless they have permission to be spoken to. Players that do not fall in line do not last long in The System. The blather about how there is no ‘I’ in team, they all profess to love and respect each other, there are never locker room feuds, etc. All the staples of sports stories and talk are ruthlessly smoothed away. You get a Seau or Moss from time to time, but mostly covering the Pats is like trying to get racy stories in the Mormon Tabernacle.
Sports writers/reporters do not like this, and willingly publish exterior dirt about the team. Look at assholes like Felger – his career is based on mindlessly tearing apart the Patriots. (Mike Reese is the only decent football reporter in Boston).
My favorite moment of every week is watching BB snuffle and mumble through the mandatory post-game press conference, for all the world like a bear baiting. HOW can this dull, inarticulate person be more clever on the field than a hot quote guy like Rex Ryan?
So when reporters have the chance to trash the team, they go at it – ad infinitum.
I’m disappointed that no one seems to be concerned that the Person of Interest’s 90 seconds in the bathroom hardly gave him enough time to wash his hands after doing his business. The NFL should launch a full investigation of this lapse of proper hygiene. Better yet, Congress should look into it.