This isn't EVER going away. Get used to it. It's out in the general non-football-watching public now, and the impressions are baked in. I hate to be so pessimistic, but it's not going away.
Earlier in the thread, I said this:
After a certain point, you can't undo what is done by the messaging. Deus can probably elaborate on this, since he's a lawyer.
My degrees are in journalism and writing. I got them back in the 80's. The world is a very different place now in terms of communication, and we have come to see that perception becomes reality.
Busy people, who are taking in way too much information to ever properly digest it, make up their minds and for many people, it's almost impossible to unmake those impressions.
It's very sad because reputations can be destroyed for no reason. Pound at a reputation long enough, and the people who have come to hate a person will not change their opinion even if you show them with indisputable evidence that every claim made against the person is simply false.
We see this every day in politics. We even see it in the big scientific issues of the day.
The league could come out and make a statements completely exonerating the Patriots and a substantial number of people will, years from now, still refer to this scandal as proof of a culture of cheating or a reason that Brady shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame.
I mean, they tape other teams doing walk-throughs, right?
The league really screwed this up, and it's a one-way bottle.
Okay, so I'm watching "The Cycle" on MSNBC (I don't typically watch it, but it was on when I came down from my office). Toure is interviewing Bill Nye and Jordan Schultz of NBC Sports...
Toure introduces Nye by saying Belichick's explanation sounds "completely absurd, footballs spontaneously deflating..."
When Nye starts talking, the banner comes up "REPORTED 2 PSI LESS"
Some quotes from Nye:
"In 2006, Mr. Brady and one of the Mannings petitioned the league to let the visiting team inflate their own footballs."
He rolls his eyes and gives a "hmm" suspiciously...
"The guy who detected an inflated ball was not a referee. It was a defensive player, D'Qwell Jackson"
(You hear Toure saying "Yup!")
"He just caught the ball and he went, 'Wow, that didn't feel right."
Crystal Ball, one of hte panel, then says, "Bill, to that point, how much of an advantage is it to play with a squishier ball?"
And Nye launches into the remarkable study proving the Patriots don't fumble.
It went downhill from there, with the NBC Sports guy piling on, the hosts all laughing about it.
It's over. If the Pats have done nothing wrong, nothing short of an apology from the NFL would be fair, BUT EVEN THAT isn't going to repair this.
If this was a sting by a vengeful former Jet official and Irsay - again IF - they have damaged the sports and the Pats irreparably, at least for the next decade. The whole thing disgusts me, however it plays out.
