Quote:
Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
You might be right about the second paragraph, but I'm not sure what happened here is so outside the bounds of what the NFL contemplated that it even reaches the point you think it does. Teams were heating balls on the sidelines in a late season game last year - no fine, just a warning. Aaron Rodgers talked about liking them overinflated. I don't see how the league couldn't think about deflating balls was a possibility.
Sure, there's a bit of a line - how about instead of stickum someone developed some new super-stickum product that adhered only to leather, and not grass, uniforms, crud? Or a sweat-activated grease that the refs couldn't detect pregame when they check linemen's arms? Or maybe greasy gatorade they could dump on each other on the sideline?
The basic point is that equipment violations have defined penalties, regardless of whether it's somehow the product of some grand conspiracy versus blatantly done in plain view of everyone. Remember back to the pine tar homer? The commissioner ruled that the penalty for using an over-tarred bat is the bat should be removed from play, so Brett's homerun should stand. What if he had used chicanery to use that bat - should the penalty be different? The penalty for using an over-curved hockey stick is 2 minutes. Should the league start penalizing players more if somehow a player is swapping in sticks quietly that violate the rule?
The worst that Brady and the Patriots got away with is playing with balls that were slightly underinflated (before weather had an effect). Whatever advantage that conferred is the same whether they slipped it past the refs, used a needle on the sideline, or had the deflator take an unnecessary bathroom break. Why should the penalty be different?
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We're way into hypotheticals at this point because I think Goodell acted unreasonably and I agree that the punishment is based more on his jackassery (saving face, popular opinion, other owners' expectations, punishment for past chicanery) than the actual alleged behavior.
That said, heating balls on the sideline, applying stickum, using an overly-curved hockey stick all falls into one category. If you take the worst-case scenario as fact in the Patriots case, having your quarterback instruct your equipment managers to deflate balls
after the refs have inspected them and then engaging in a cover-up, destroying evidence, and refusing to cooperate with the investigation puts you in a different category, no? I think that's the type of shit that the conduct detrimental language is supposed to cover.
TM
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