ChesBay
Practice Squad Player
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2008
- Messages
- 138
- Reaction score
- 139
What do you mean? The statement says:
(my emphasis).
I mean you can choose to believe that the refs did the squeeze test pregame instead of a real measurement, but the NFL is now officially saying the refs confirmed they were inflated properly pre-game. Maybe it's a lie (probably isn't, though), but it is the NFL's official position, which is all that's gonna matter to whatever the NFL is eventually gonna do.
The key part of the NFL statement is that they've interviewed 40 people so far....which presumably would have to include Walt Anderson, for sure. Yet they failed to conclusively state that the balls were at a specific psi that was within the range specified in the rule. They could have easily done so if, in fact, Anderson told them that he had applied a gauge to each ball....and obtained readings that were between 12.5 - 13.5. But that WASN'T stated! In fact, I'm suggesting that they intentionally put the sentence defining the rule adjacent to the next sentence concerning the inspection...thereby creating such an impression. Why did they do that? To buy more time to figure out how they're going to address the official's actions, or lack thereof. Why the legal team? To remove them from sticky aspect about the officials, and how they did their job. Why the forensics? If you'll notice more closely, the forensics they're talking about are related to the electronic and video aspects of the game tape - i.e. they're going to see if there's any evidence of an equipment manager or ballboy tampering with them during the game. Why? Because then they can state, once and for all time, that there's no evidence that they can find....while diverting attention from the officials.
Anybody who has ever worked within a large corporate environment, will see these same glaring indicators.