Cheers, good read.
This:
"How on earth can you have a rule about air in a football that makes 12.5 PSI inside the ball legal, but 12.4 PSI illegal, when your game is played outside?"
...is the crux of the matter for me. I can't say flat-out that the NFL has no basis for this standard, but the idea that the ball could be legal or illegal from play to play based on temperature, weather, dampness, or what happened to it seems unsound logically. They rules of "The Ball" in the NFL are somewhat specific for the size and psi range of teh ball. But in terms of actual gameplay they also grant broad powers to the referee to determine - and, in absentia of another explicit rule, a
responsibility to determine - the veracity of the football in play throughout the game.
I guess what I'm saying is while I'm firmly in the camp that I DO NOT believe for one second that there was any sort of nefarious plot to gain an advantage via air pressure by the Patriots, I'm still unclear 1) what is supposed to happen IF a ball that was used for play becomes unfit during play, and 2) what is supposed to happen IF it is determined to be unfit during the game. I mean sure, you throw the ball out and don't use it - but using the D'Qwell Jackson example...what if he'd run that INT back for a TD and the ball was immediately determined to be deflated? You can't just uphold the TD and/or INT because maybe the only reason he was able to catch it was because the psi had dropped below the legal threshold. You'd have to penalize NE for the first infraction on the play, which is using an illegal ball. So it's 15 yds and loss of down. So strategically NE could throw a flag on themselves and have the ball checked. But really the ref is responsible for the ball at that point, not them. So you throw the ref out? (this is all devil's advocate, this is the stupidest controversy ever and I hate myself for typing any of this)
The blowup this week suggests that it's an unfair advantage in gameplay - so if so should the Pats have been penalized yardage had they been caught in-game? Like holding, or PI, or offsides? Those all provide unfair advantages too, and are penalized as such. 5 yds, 10, whatever. Is the idea they should be fined, suspended, or thrown out of the league only a result of not being caught in-game? If someone wore illegal pads or some other equipment infraction and it remained unchecked during the game, do you fine them because you missed the opportunity to throw them out of the game they already affected? None of it makes any sense if you follow it all the way to its conclusion.
Perhaps another play for BB to recommend to the rules committee that it become reviewable - "was the ball within legal psi range on that scoring play?" If it's such a concern that it has caused this much uproar, certainly that's something the NFL would have to admit should be reviewable on a play-by-play basis. Or, as the article the quoted poster linked suggested, maybe...
just maybe...the "rule" was always a joke to begin with.
