This was in the comments from Florio's latest post:
3menandablog says:Jul 19, 2015 12:29 PM
Sat next to John Clayton on a flight recently. He told me it’s known that Tom Brady has been cheating for the last 8 years with the footballs. I’m sure he’ll get off still.
Once again, I ask how would he know that? Some players complaining? How would they know?
It seems likely the league had heard that, too, and attempted to sting the Patriots. The problem is, they couldn't prove it -- but they believed it so much they massaged the data until it got to the result they wanted:
The Patriots deflated the footballs by an amount less than half than would be expected to occur by nature and EXACTLY by the amount of the difference between the two gauges.