This has really been bothering me. People used to actually get into trouble for slandering others. Now, BSPN is free to repeat lie after lie and nobody holds them accountable. Well, they did give that 12:20 am retraction...
It's been said that on the field the Patriots play chess while the rest of the league play checkers. Unfortunately, off the field it is the other way around. The league's obviously been out to get Brady for a long time and the Ravens play-off game was the tipping point. After Tom suggested that the Ravens read the rulebook on the "trick" play that wasn't a trick play, the owners had their concrete example that one of the help was getting uppity and had to be put in his place. From there, and having learned from the Bountygate fiasco, it was a simple matter of finding a point in the game that could be used to legitimize their fraud. Fortunately for them, such a a point was delivered in the form of a Brady interception that was used to float the idea that according to the interceptor the Pats used "light" balls,. The fact that said interceptor refuted this lie was of no consequence as they were able to use the lie as the basis for the phony sting operation before needing to make the lie available for public consumption. From there, Brady was forced to run a race against the league after the league had pantsed him at the starting line.
The league knows Brady is innocent of the whole Deflate-gate non-sense but to them that's not his real crime. The league wants to show Brady that, regardless of any accomplishments of he and his ilk, they are football's, and life's, real winners and even the most successful of them are not part of the club. To that end they flex their muscles by using henchmen/minions (Goodell, Kensil, Pash, Wells, et al) to implement their will and then justify their fundamental dishonesty and unfairness via useful idiots (Munson, Sharpe, Storm, etc.) provided via media outlets they control (i.e. anyone seeking to do business with the NFL). The bucket they provide to have these people carry their water is a farcical CBA, the epitome of a contract that is created when all the money and/or power is on one side of the table (see Versailles, Treaty of). The CBA might as well say "The league is always right and when it's not right see Article 26."
Anyway, with regards to the First Take in question, around the 1:02 mark it sounded to me like Shannon Sharpe was lumping in the Butler interception with the ref picking up the flag in the DAL/DET game and the Dez Bryant catch/non-catch in the DAL/GB game as things that happened in last year's playoffs that make people question the integrity of the game or something. Did I hear wrong or is this guy really that stupid or intellectually dishonest?
