Forgive me if this has been gone over (and feel free to link me to relevant posts if it has) but as damning as the phone destruction is, I keep coming back to the same question: why a month?
Roger, by your own admission, you knew about the phone a week in advance of the hearing. You had time to become outraged, to calm down and then formulate a strategy for the appeal. You then went through a 10 hour discussion that apparently never once moved the needle in any way toward innocence.
So why did it take you a month to decide to leave everything as is?
I'd understand if maybe you were giving thought to alternate reduction proposals, but your own statement indicates that those were never legitimate options. If anything, you seem to have wanted to increase the penalty, but a 10 minute conversation would have dissuaded that notion.
So what took so long?
Sure, maybe you were pondering subsequent legal strategy, but if this is a slam dunk, what does it matter where or how Brady and the NFLPA appeals your decision? And does it really take three weeks to deliberate over that? Even if I disregard your support of Exponent and blatant ignorance of the natural forces at work, the question remains; why did it take a month?