If Goodell says a word about deflategate in the upcoming days, and if he were honest and intelligent, it would go something like this:
I am here to share with you our conclusions about the issue of football air pressure as it relates to the AFC championship game. I must tell you that a great many mistakes have been made throughout this process, and we must all learn from those mistakes.
First of all, we realize now that it was a serious oversight on our part to, in our rule book, specify a legal pressure range for an NFL football without also specifying a temperature for the testing to occur. As the rule was written, it was expected that footballs would only be tested at room temperature before a game. That is how the procedure has always been implemented. It is in fact the only sensible way to do such testing.
This is because, and this has been a science lesson for all of us, it is simply true that the air pressure inside a football, like the pressure of any gas in any container, varies with temperature. As temperature goes up the pressure goes up. As temperature goes down, the pressure goes down. A football at a certain pressure at room temperature will drop below that level if it is cooled, without having been tampered with. Its pressure will rise if it is heated, as well, without having been tampered with.
When our game officials decided to test footballs at halftime of the AFC championship game in response to a concern about the pressure of game balls being used, they unfortunately were not aware of this fundamental relationship of temperature and pressure. Applying the rule book’s 12.5-13.5 psi pressure range to a football that is not at room temperature is a test with no validity. In fact, with a very substantial temperature drop, of about 25 degrees or more, it would actually be physically impossible for any football that was in the 12.5-13.5 psi range at room temperature to still be within that range after the temperature drop.
Accordingly, the lower-than-specification readings for Patriots footballs at halftime of the AFC championship game are not indicative of tampering. We have concluded that there is no evidence of tampering with footballs in that game. Let me repeat, there is no evidence that any person connected with the Patriots, or any other person for that matter, ever tampered with the footballs after the pregame inspections.
Our officials have now been briefed about the science that is at the core of this issue. All future pressure testing will be done only at room temperature. All tested footballs will be kept by league officials rather than turned over to team personnel, and the footballs will be brought to the field by the league officials shortly before the start of the game. This change in procedure is not because tampering has occurred here, once again, but it is an added fail-safe measure to limit the potential for wrongdoing. We will also discuss in our competition committee if the current policy of using differing sets of game balls for each team should continue.
It is most unfortunate that our game officials made such serious errors in applying the pressure rules, it is also unfortunate that rule was so inadequately described in our rule book, and it is especially unfortunate that we were not able to realize the existence of these errors in a timely manner. The consequence of these failings on our part caused many people to jump to unsupported conclusions, including pointing fingers at the Patriots organization. This was unwarranted. Many irresponsible persons relied upon invalid or incorrect information to even call certain individuals within the Patriots organization, including Tom Brady and Bill Belichick specifically, liars and cheaters. Such charges were totally unfounded, and to the extent that our mistakes fed this media frenzy and a rush to judgement, we apologize to the entire Patriots organization.
I will be happy to take any questions.
