Roger and Ted's Not So Excellent Adventure

There was little doubt from the very beginning was that this pitiful charade was rigged against Tom Brady and the Patriots. There’s no question that the only justice Brady can hope for will be found in the courts, far away from the insane asylum presided over by Commissioner Blockhead, Roger Stokoe Goodell. There’s no telling where things go from here. It’s even money that Goodell trips over some bizarrely innovative way to make things even worse. Who can tell? Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy and stupid people don’t know they’re stupid. This is what makes Goodell predictably unpredictable.

Many believe that Footballs Obeying the Laws of Physics-Gate has threatened the “integrity of the game” (in particular, a 45-7 game. Hmm.). Clearly, the Commissioner indeed has a responsibility to protect the “integrity of the game”. But implicit in this, doesn’t the Commissioner himself also have the responsibility to act with integrity, his behavior beyond reproach at all times?

If a time-stamped video were to surface showing Mr. McNally seated on the throne in the rest room moments before the AFC Championship game, staring intently at the sports page, a large bag of footballs intact at his side, even that would not be enough to clear Tom Brady. A recurring theme has emerged in The Sporting Press – namely, that Goodell will not negate Brady’s punishment under any circumstances because he has too much invested in the outcome; to wit, $5 million in cash, formerly the property of the NFL owners, now allegedly residing in Ted Wells’ Swiss bank account. (Note to Ted – see what I can do with innuendo?)

Ironically, it is now Commissioner Blockhead’s integrity that is on the line. Should he be struck by lightning and somehow obtain a faint glimmer of understanding that footballs do in fact deflate in cold, wet weather and that Brady and the Patriots did absolutely nothing wrong, could Blockhead possibly muster the strength of character to admit that he and his hired gun screwed the pooch? I’ll bet you couldn’t find five football fans or a single sportswriter anywhere who believe Blockhead would do the right thing at the expense of sacrificing what’s left of his already tattered reputation (oh, and his $40 million per year job).

Why is this okay?

With a few notable exceptions (hi there, Sally Jenkins), The Sporting Press is either too intellectually dishonest or just plain not bright enough to give a ****. The process levied historic, unprecedented punishments before Brady and the Patriots were allowed to even respond to the accusations. That’s okay. The NFL leaked false information and withheld this fact from the team and the public until it could render its harsh judgment. That’s okay. The independent counsel’s outside expert witness for hire botched the science. That’s okay, too. Because, you know, Brady probably did something.

What about Ted Wells’ integrity? The hired gun jumped to a far-fetched conclusion based on his incompetent expert and then tied himself into knots to build a paper-thin case against one of the icons of football history based on heroic assumptions, shaky inferences and manufactured innuendo. It should be pretty apparent to anyone with the remotest clue that Wells whored himself out for big bucks and screaming headlines. And he’s awfully thin-skinned for a big time litigator who is so supremely confident in his case.

Incredibly, much of the media has swallowed this lame nonsense about Wells being “independent.” Okay – compared to Mike Kensil and Jeff Pash conducting the investigation, I guess Wells could be considered (ahem) “independent.” But the NFL is a HUGE and - at least insofar as budgets are concerned – particularly gullible client for Ted. I can well imagine that Ted Wells would do just about anything the NFL wanted him to do at any time (for $money!) and I think his behavior is direct evidence of just that. So no, Wells and his report cannot be considered independent by any stretch of the imagination And for the record, I would note that while the league has hailed the Wells report for its independence, they’ve not been banging the drum quite so loudly regarding its fairness, objectivity and accuracy, but maybe I’m reading too much into that.

Here again, the vast majority of the press has given Ted a free pass. Why is this okay?

One last aspect of this continues to trouble me. In addition to “Protecting the Shield” (an expression that henceforth I will be able to use to induce vomiting), doesn’t the Commissioner have a duty to Protect the Brand?

I will confess that I have taken great pleasure in watching Super Bowl XLIX over and over and over again. This is widely considered one of the greatest games ever played, with two superb teams putting everything they had on the line for 60 minutes. It also featured one of the greatest players of all time leading a comeback for the ages with a fourth quarter performance that rivals anything I’ve ever seen in any sport anywhere ever. This should have been an Epic Celebration of the Greatness of Pro Football, a game where fans everywhere said – wow – wasn’t that awesome?

Instead, with the game on the line, we had announcers and commentators making snarky comments about deflated footballs and tarnished legacies. It was the ineptitude of Roger and his dimwitted henchmen that turned what should have been a sublime moment for the NFL into a low rent experience, at the same time trashing the reputation of a great player who has been nothing but a credit to (and a huge money-maker for) the league. Because some guys with an ax to grind weren’t bright enough to realize that cold weather deflates tires and footballs and anything inflated with air. This should serve as a case study for how to manufacture a crisis and a scandal out of thin air and how to turn a gleaming diamond into the foulest imaginable turd. But, hey, that’s why Roger makes the Big Bucks.

I guess this is okay too.

Hey Roger, I hope it was worth it.

This like everything else Goodell touches turns into dung for everyone and everyone involved loses. I can't think of one person who has won in all of this.

Zeus said:

This should serve as a case study for how to manufacture a crisis and a scandal out of thin air

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It's too bad this air stays fully inflated in all atmospheric conditions.

Excellent post, Zeus.

First Rate rant Zeus. Why does the press let all this slide...$$$$$$$ they know that outside of New England the Pats are hated by the fans in the rest of the country. So thats who they pander to, outside of a few they have zero integrity, its all about the bucks. The hate for the pats is the reason commissioner blockhead will leave the punishment as is. He knows the rest of the country wants brady and those arrogant patriots slapped as hard as possible. And he gets a two for, he gets to build his tarnished reputation without losing much fan support.

Nice work @Zeus. I enjoyed your post.

This whole situation is power, greed, arrogance and ego run amok. Nothing more.

So frustrating...

You Sir (father included)...are no Kennedy.

http://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/roger-goodell/bio/290639/

• Father, Charles, was appointed to replace assassinated U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Its always interesting to see when someone is taken down...who benefits the most.

Rob0729 said:

This like everything else Goodell touches turns into dung for everyone and everyone involved loses. I can't think of one person who has won in all of this.

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Don't lose sight of the fact that yes we indeed did win!

Nice Summary, Zeus.

Regarding legacies. I think history will have unkind words for Herr Goodell and maybe some apologies for BB/Brady/Patriots. Not sure how many years, but I'm thinking some time around HoF entries or even a few years later. It will require the media to turn on themselves and sooner or later (when they've all become the story), they'll want to out-story each other and it will be cannibalistic debauchery.

Regarding Wells, somewhere there's a used car salesman wanting his mustache back. I would think the 5 million would go a long ways into helping that poor soul.

signbabybrady said:

Don't lose sight of the fact that yes we indeed did win!

View attachment 9566

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Great read Zeus and yes SBB.........we are the world champions, again.

And what we do drives them all to hate and drives them totally bonkers -- we just keep on winning, year in and year out,mover and over and over again....imLOVE it! Sure, we don't win it all every year, but in 2014 we absolutley did.

This run of dominance is unlike any preceding it and I highly doubt it any team will come anywhere close to matching it.

Same coach, same QB and same owner all doing their jobs has been the most remarkable achievement I've ever seen in sports and they ain't done yet!!

I have never felt so confident about winning another either as I do waiting for the 2015 season to begin.

Barring a serious run of the injury bug -- nothing else can or will stop this team.

NOTHING

RelocatedPatFan said:

Nice Summary, Zeus.

Regarding legacies. I think history will have unkind words for Herr Goodell and maybe some apologies for BB/Brady/Patriots. Not sure how many years, but I'm thinking some time around HoF entries or even a few years later. .

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I don't forsee apologies but I have no doubt that this era Pats will go down as a dynasty and BB and TB will go down as GoATs. Spygate....Deflategate...all rubbish. People will see the records and know that they won fair and square.

I do think Goodell's legacy will be that of money made but a commissioner who chose Draconian methods and sought out confrontation to run the league as opposed to collaboration and trying to find harmony.

Its the present that is a challenge to deal with.

I hope you don't mind if I add in a bit more summary Zeus, a la @Palm Beach Pats Fan

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...d-the-entire-deflategate-controversy.1119354/

"My Occam’s razor explanation for deflategate.

The Occam’s razor principle is used to identify a likely explanation for an otherwise mysterious outcome that has many other possible explanations. It largely relies upon the idea that a series of events fitting with common sense and consistent with human nature, but also fitting with all of the known facts, is more likely to be true than are significantly more complicated explanations. This is especially true when alternative explanations require highly improbable events to occur, or when they rely upon behavior that is far out of character for the people who are involved in the mystery.

I have applied this sort of logic to the “deflategate” controversy and the following is what I think happened (and yes, this is speculation on my part).

We begin with the playoff game between the Patriots and the Ravens. It is a cold weather game, in fact it is about 20 degrees at kickoff. Shortly before halftime the Ravens defense intercepts a Tom Brady pass. John Harbaugh, or another Ravens coach, asks that the football be kept and “looked at”. Why? We don’t exactly know. Paranoia, perhaps? At an opportune moment, likely at halftime, the Ravens' equipment guy, after being asked to do so, measures the air pressure in the football (even though this act is illegal). The reading is 10 psi. The Ravens are puzzled, not understanding that a football that had been pumped to 12.5 psi at 72 degrees will, BY THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS, drop in pressure about 2.5 psi due to a temperature drop of over 50 degrees on this very cold day. Such a pressure drop happens without any human involvement.

The Ravens equipment guy exclaims “This football is at 10 psi, coach Harbaugh! Wow! It’s supposed to be at 12.5 psi! The Patriots must be cheating!” Harbaugh also doesn’t understand the relevant science, but he has the pressing need to focus on making adjustments for the second half.

So coach Harbaugh says “Well, that’s nice, but we’re in a dogfight here, up 21-14. There’s a lot more football to be played, so let’s control what we can control.” Thus Harbaugh does not act on the low football pressure news.

The second half is marked by two Patriot comebacks and a 35-31 victory. Harbaugh is angered by one particular tactic of the Patriots, the use of offensive formations that employ eligible/ineligible receivers, players adopting field positions that are inconsistent with their jersey numbers, unless they first report to the refs (which they had done). Harbaugh voices his displeasure over the tactic in his pointed postgame remarks. Tom Brady then replies “Well, maybe he should read the rule book!”

Harbaugh is FURIOUS at Brady’s flippant remark.

Now move forward a few days. The Colts are preparing for the Patriots. Their GM Ryan Grigson, their coach Chuck Pagano, and the Ravens coach Joan Harbaugh are friends and former co-workers. Grigson (or Pagano) calls up Harbaugh for any and all helpful advice. Harbaugh goes over game strategy and the Patriots weaknesses, making many helpful game plan suggestions. Then at some point, recalling Brady’s rule book zinger, he says almost as an afterthought “Hey, there’s one other thing, guys. We think that the Patriots do something funny with the footballs, deflating them a little. We picked off a football and checked it out. It was below the pressure specs, by a lot!”

Grigson and Pagano also don’t understand the relevant science. Their hatred for the Patriots even exceeds that of Harbaugh’s, though. Grigson was a Ram in 2001 (they lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots), an Eagle in 2004 (they lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots), and a Raven after that, through many fierce playoff and regular season battles with New England. Pagano was on the Ravens staff too. Grigson and Pagano decide that Harbaugh’s claims demand action. They know just what to do: they will contact a high-ranking NFL executive named Matt Kensil. Why Kensil? He is the son of a previous New York Jets president who was jilted by Bill Belichick when the coach resigned after being named the Jets head coach in 2000. Kensil was a Jets employee through much of the 2000s. His dislike for the Patriots was no secret. Better yet, as an NFL game day operations official, he was in a position to not only listen to grigson and Pagano, he might even be able to do something about it!

Kensil assures Grigson and/or Pagano that “I will be ready, if the Patriots try to pull that kind of stunt this week”. He instructs Pagano to hold onto any Patriots footballs whenever possible, and “then we’ll see what they are up to”. This overall plan to catch the Patriots red-handed is Kensil’s. He does not involve the on-field game officials in this plan. This detail explains why the on-field game officials are not meticulous in, for example, logging pregame football pressure measurements. They don’t normally do that, so they also don’t do it for the AFC championship game.

The grand opportunity for Kensil, Grigson, and/or Pagano arises with a Colts interception late in the first half. The Colts player collects the souvenir and gives it to their equipment guy for safe keeping. Grigson or Pagano sends word to the equipment guy: “Hey, you need to check the pressure in that football, because the Patriots may be up to something!”

The Colts equipment guy pulls out a needle and pressure gauge. He measures the pressure as 11.4 psi! He thinks “Yes, we are onto something! It should be 12.5-13.5, right?” He runs to Grigson and says “this ball is deflated!”

Grigson wants to see it for himself. The Colts equipment guy measures the pressure as 11.3 psi. Note: every time that you test the pressure, some air escapes the football to pressurize the gauge itself, so the drop from 11.4 to 11.3 is normal. However, the drop from 12.5 psi to 11.4 psi is also normal, given the temperature of 48 degrees at halftime, 20-25 degrees warmer than the temperature at which the footballs were inflated indoors. But again, Grigson slept through the “PV=nRT” lecture in high school and is oblivious to that. He thinks “if the pressure dropped, any, then somebody—THE PATRIOTS! — must have let air out of this football!

Grigson finds Matt Kensil and passes on the word “WE’VE GOT THEM!” Kensil also wants to see it for himself. He measures the pressure as 11.2 psi! “Yes, we have them dead to rights! The footballs are supposed to be 13 psi, plus/minus 0.5. This one is almost 2 psi lower than 13!”

Kensil takes the news to the head on-field game official at halftime, who is very upset that Kensil has measured the pressure of a football, which is something that is simply not allowed. He snaps “We are the only ones who are supposed to do that!”

Still, Kensil presses the main point, that in his opinion a partially deflated football was used in the game. He insists “We need to check the pressure of all of the game footballs!”

Kensil (or more probably the official) checks the other Patriots footballs. They are all in the range of 11.3-11.5 psi, except one that is at about 12 psi. Kensil (or the official) exclaims “Wow… we do have them! All of these footballs are supposed to be 13 psi, plus/minus 0.5. They are all low, and all but one is at least 1 psi lower than the minimum!”

"Kensil and/or the official do not realize that BY THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS the footballs will have dropped in pressure over 1 psi by the 20-25 degree temperature drop, without any human involvement. 12.5 psi becomes 11.4 psi, without a single molecule of gas taken out!

Kensil (or the official) then inflates the Patriots footballs up to 13 psi, thinking that he is doing the right thing. “After all, we can’t let them cheat in the second half!”

Kensil (or the official) then checks the Colts footballs. They are all 12.4-12.5 psi, right at the minimum specs. “Aha, LEGAL! Wow… the Colts are clean!” Kensil (or the official) does not know that these footballs had originally been inflated to 13.5 psi by another game day official, per the Colts' instructions. They just knew that they had been approved to start with. BY THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS all of the footballs would have dropped in pressure by over 1 psi due to the 20-25 degree temperature drop, without any human involvement. Over the first half, in other words, for the Colts footballs 13.5 psi becomes 12.4 psi, without a single molecule taken out! Yes, Mother Nature treated all of the footballs, on both sidelines, exactly the same way. They did not start out at the same pressure, however. The Colts footballs began at 13.5 psi, the Patriots footballs began at 12.5 psi (except for one outlier, one that was at 13 psi or so, the one that was still close to specs at halftime).Both sets of footballs had been legal, but they began at opposite ends of the legal pressure range.

All of the footballs are now 100% legal for play, to everyone's satisfaction. The head referee reminds Kensil that measuring football pressure is to be left to the on-field game officials. Still, it was time for the second half kickoff, with no time for an argument. Having in-spec footballs, the head ref decides “Let’s go!”

The Patriots run roughshod over the Colts and the game becomes a blowout. Kensil, Grigson, and owner Jim Irsay (whom Grigson had informed about the news, after halftime) are dejected. But… they are NOT going to let the Patriots “get away with it” even in a blowout win. They were still not aware that Mother Nature was the only football depressurizer that day, other than the people who illegally checked the pressure in the footballs, especially the intercepted ball, and multiple times.

Jim Irsay simply can’t contain himself. “We’ve got the Patriots red-handed” he thinks. “Could the outcome of the game be overturned? Well, even if that does not happen, the Patriots will be smeared by this, and good!” Kensil, a high ranking NFL executive, agrees and encorages Irsay and Grigson to press the issue, as he talks with his NFL co-workers.

Without delay, it was time for Irsay (or Grigson) to call up the Indianapolis reporter Bob Kravitz. “We are going to absolutely blow the lid off of this thing!”

Kravitz happily obliges. The lid is indeed blown off. ESPN begins coverage 24/7. There is lead story coverage on all of the major TV news networks. CNN leads their world news coverage with a “deflategate” feature.

The Patriots are dumbfounded. The morning after the game is the first time that they have even heard about the controversy. Belichick inquires of his people “What is going on?” He calls a meeting and they discuss what could have happened. Everyone who had anything to do with preparing the footballs is adamant that no tampering had occurred.

Ernie Adams, a Patriots numbers guy, possible savant, and Belichick confidant, then chimes in. He comments matter-of-factly “footballs will always lose pressure when they cool down. They also gain pressure when they heat up. That’s also true for a balloon that you buy at the grocery store on a cold day. That’s also true of the tire pressure in your car. That's science, folks. Maybe that is all that is going on here?” He then does the math. Or maybe it isn’t Ernie. Perhaps it is instead the ex-Stanford offensive tackle and aeronautics and astronautics engineering major Cameron Fleming, or the Patriots RPI-educated aeronautical engineer and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia. Someone, in any event, eventually says “Bill, at halftime it was 48 degrees outside. A football that is at 12.5 psi at 72 degrees, when cooled to 48 degrees, will then be at about 11.3 psi. That will happen every time, just by the pressure/temperature relationship. With the cold rain, the drop that you would see may even be more. What kind of pressure drop did they measure?”

Bill Belichick says “I don’t know what drop in pressure they saw. Nobody is saying. But… let’s go and try it. Let’s do this right, though. Let's go through our whole routine from the beginning, just like what we would do on game day, from how the footballs are initially selected, to how they are prepped, to pumping them up, and to bringing them outside on a cold day. Let’s see what happens”

What they found, what happened, and what always happens, is that a football that is cooled over 20 degrees drops in pressure by over 1 psi. It just does. Bill says “I am glad that you guys didn’t sleep through that ‘PV=nRT’ lecture in high school like some of us did!”

Still, the media frenzy continues unabated with 24 hour coverage. Respected football pundits brazenly deem Bill Belichick and especially Tom Brady to be liars and cheaters. This is apparently due to their shaky reliance upon reading body language. Kensil leaks inside information to members of the press, details that implicate the Patriots in wrongdoing but that later are shown to be either untrue or slanted. Perhaps Irsay helps with the media leaks too, still without understanding the underlying science.

In the end, though, to turn a favorite phrase of Bill Belichick, the science “is what it is”. What the French scientist Guillaume Amontons described in about 1700, what was later incorporated into what we call the ideal gas law, is still valid today. The "pressure drop with falling temperature phenomenon" is confirmed in universities, in high schools, in middle schools, even in some grade school science projects everywhere.Anyone with a football, a pump, a gauge, and a refrigerator can (and does) observe that, indeed, a football cooled over 20 degrees drops in pressure by over 1 psi. It just does.

But Roger Goodell had also slept through the PV=nRT lecture in high school. He doesn’t “get it” or at least he does not understand it well enough to ever begin to explain it to the public. He decides to bring in Ted Wells to investigate thoroughly.

And the rest is history...

robertweathers said:

I don't forsee apologies but I have no doubt that this era Pats will go down as a dynasty and BB and TB will go down as GoATs. Spygate....Deflategate...all rubbish. People will see the records and know that they won fair and square.

I do think Goodell's legacy will be that of money made but a commissioner who chose Draconian methods and sought out confrontation to run the league as opposed to collaboration and trying to find harmony.

Its the present that is a challenge to deal with.

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True apologies will go too far, how about coming out with balanced reporting or...even something that seeks to get to the full truth and not the 1 sided slam fest that we've been living in. Sooner or later someone is going to be down and out and try to make 1 last grab for the headline, or maybe even a tell all book.

I grew up in a small town in NH and a very close friend of mine's dad was our high school principal. We golfed a few days ago and I asked him, "Did our physics curriculum (I wasn't smart enough for AP) cover the Ideal Gas Law? I must have been asleep for the lecture..."

He says,"No. Entropy beat it out <joking>".

How to deal with haters:

Zeus said:

........... This should serve as a case study for how to manufacture a crisis and a scandal out of thin air and how to turn a gleaming diamond into the foulest imaginable turd..................

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Nice post Zeus.

But this conclusion is both extremely sad and true.

It's hard to believe that intelligent threads like this can coexist on the same board as that idiotic "capitulate" thread. Great analysis. Far more intelligent than any of the Sports Writers have written.