This just further shows that the league picks and chooses the stories/controversies that it wants to project.. The NFL continues to look incompetent and corrupt, at least more-so than it already had prior to this.
Just compare these 2 stories... you have one where this sketchy doctor who's been illegally peddling PEDs to famous athletes is caught on a hidden camera confessing some names that he's providing HGH to, including Manning... with dates that line up with when Manning missed an entire season because of major neck surgeries that could have been career threatening. With shipments of HGH going to his HOUSE.
Manning is a very historic and important name in the NFL, he's NFL royalty and has been since the Archie Manning days.. That's the NFL's golden child, good ole Peyton Manning.. From day 1 of that story being published, there was a concerted effort from the NFL and Manning himself to silence it, going as far as literally sending private goons dressed as police over to the guys parent's house to question (ie interrogate/intimidate) them into silence and a retraction, while at the same time hiring a former white house press secretary as a public relations cleanup party.. For ordinary working folk, that is hollywood movie level frightening and they stepped in line because they didn't want to have their lives bowled over by forces way more powerful than themselves and no money to put up a legitimate fight/defense... It would be like Tyson fighting a 4 year old. This story was literally shot down and silenced right from the get-go and we didn't hear a peep about it for 7 months... just think about that...
Then on the other hand you have Deflategate, which was created by the bitter front office while they railroaded Brady and the Pats at every turn, navigating the story to a predetermined/desired conclusion of guilt and using their media vehicle to pound that message across over and over and over again until the ignorant masses took it as fact... over something that what was later found to literally be nothing. They intentionally exacerbated the story to make it bigger than the alleged violation even was... lead by Mike Kensil and some Colts & Ravens staff that laid the trap for that game in the first place, with articles that have already come out acknowledging that the Ravens (raging with butt-hurt anger over losing 2 separate 14 point leads to the Pats the week prior and throwing a tantrum about it in the post-game press conference) "tipped off" the Colts, then the Colts brought it up with the league as a concern BEFORE the game... and Kensil, head of game day operations and a 24/7 hard on for the New York Jets that he was an EMPLOYEE of for over 30 years, used as an opportunity to get the patriots "In big ****ing trouble!" as he so eloquently spited toward a Pats equipment manager at half time.
They intentionally exacerbated the story to make it bigger than the alleged violation even was because it was Brady and the Patriots. With multiple examples of equipment violations related to ball tampering having set precedent, all of which concluded with either a verbal warning from the NFL not to do it again or a small fine of $20,000, the NFL instead chose to levy out 2 unprecedented penalties... The first towards the Patriots as institutional cheating with a 1st and 4th rounder, plus $1 million in fines for a player equipment violation.. The second to Brady as an individual player with a 4 game suspension.. So even if Brady was on camera jabbing a ball with a needle while smiling at the camera, it would have been worthy of a $20,000 fine and been done with it, but they chose to go the nuclear option route to kill a spider. How they justify comparing ball tampering to PED use, while at the same time punishing the organization with unprecedented and devastating penalties and revoking of very valuable assets, is so unbelievable I don't know where to start. No team has ever been punished for a player taking steroids, but they decided to make the institutional level conspiracy connection despite saying that they cleared Belichick and the staff of any knowledge.
Look at how they handled the Falcons piping in crowd noise, or the Browns electronic comms during a game, or the Chargers using Stickum.. they dolled out a mid-round or later loss of draft pick and called it a day, which is how they handled actual rule violations with concrete evidence... They chose to make this story big, and the Super Bowl was the ultimate media mega-platform for it to launch off like a rocket into outer space. It was all done intentionally and the NFL stayed relevant from February thru September, some of which were months that would typically be a total NFL blackout as far as coverage with nothing going on..
/rant
