My God can you read what people have written about this and absorb it?
There was no grounds to make it about guilt or innocence.
Volumes and volumes of law say that no one can dispute and arbiters judgment on guilt and innocence.
It is not legal to go to court to fight the arbiters decision.
Brady's team could only fight the process that led to that decision.
If goodell follows all of the rules of arbitration he could determine brady was Aaron Hernandez accomplice and ban him for life from the NFL and then if he followed the rules of arbitration his judgment in making that decision cannot be questioned in court.
This.
Basically guilt/innocence was decided by this guy...
... and the rest was labor law. You don't really think the NFLPA was pleading for the Patriots to be exonerated, do you? 31/32 of its membership think reflexively that the Patriots are guilty from the jump. Tom Brady sneezes and they say he doesn't have a cold, it's a trap. He's sniffing pepper to fool you.
The court of public opinion is another matter.
It is interesting, however, that the coverage I hear on sports radio and sometimes see on sports TV (yes, BSPN and NFL*N) seems to be way less vitriolic than the League*'s original false-leak-fed coverage.
The tone around this seems to be more "Well, they might/might not have done it... I think they did something shady but really how important can this even be... the Colts got beat down worse AFTER the gameballs were changed out..."
What's missing, however, is the angle that the League* essentially colluded to strip the Pats of draft picks and suspend Brady. That's the
real bullcrap here. It's a "Break up the Patiots" move, and it would be good if
somebody outside the Pats' fan-base called that one as it is.
When we're looking back at the Brady era, that might get some traction... but I doubt it. People want to look at a dominant team and say "well, they really were only so good... they cut a corner or two to get there."
Most people don't even go that deep, they just say "Yeah that run was pretty impressive. Different era though. Can't compare."
It's only after you see the chicanery on the League*'s part these last few years to smear the Pats that you really care that Carmen Policy was a Cap criminal... and only if you're deep, deep into football. 90% of fans are like "That guy run good. That guy throw good. Ooo he got JACKED UP."