“I don’t want anyone touching the balls after that. I don’t want anyone rubbing them.” – Tom Brady, Jan. 22, 2015
Professional sports jumped the shark Thursday. When hoity-toity academic types call sports fans simple-minded, we don’t have a comeback anymore. We’ve spent the last week talking about deflated footballs. Guilty as charged.
Deflate-Gate hit its height of ridiculousness at Tom Brady’s 30-minute press conference Thursday afternoon. Brady denied having any knowledge of playing with deflated footballs in the first half of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game against the Colts. ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Tuesday night that 11 of the 12 game balls the Patriots played with were under-inflated by two pounds of air as required by NFL regulations. The NFL requires that all game balls be inflated between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch.
Bill Belichick also denied knowledge of the deflated footballs at his nearly 12-minute press conference Thursday morning. Belichick stood at the podium for 18 minutes less than Brady did, because he didn’t amuse the clowns in attendance who were masquerading as journalists. He issued an eight-minute opening statement, and deflected five questions before he walked off. In comparison to Brady’s train wreck, it was a work of art.
“I’m not squeezing the balls. That’s not part of my process.” – Tom Brady, Jan. 22, 2015
There’s a legitimate sports story here buried deep beneath the foolishness. Eleven of the 12 footballs the Patriots used in the first half somehow became deflated after the referees had inspected them prior to kick-off. It seems suspicious, and the Patriots should be reprimanded if the league confirms they were illegally deflating them.
But that’s all it is – a sports story. And it’s really half of a story, because we don’t have all of the facts. No other details have been released since Mortensen’s report, and Brady said Thursday nobody from the NFL has contacted him about the issue yet.
The Patriots may have tried to gain an unfair advantage on the Colts in a football game that they won by 38 points. It’s duplicitous, especially when you factor in the Patriots’ history of rule bending, but hardly deserving of the suffix “gate.”
“To me, those balls are perfect. When I felt them, they were perfect.” – Tom Brady, Jan. 22, 2015
The NFL has bigger problems to worry about. The league is recovering from its domestic violence crisis this fall, in which star running backs Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson were revealed as domestic abusers. TMZ Sports leaked a video in September of Rice hitting his now-wife inside of an elevator, and Peterson was brought up on charges for beating his four-year-old son with a tree branch four days after the Rice video was released.
On top of that, the NFL admitted in September in federal court that it expects almost one third of retired players to experience brain trauma. That’s a pretty big deal, but yet it largely remains ignored.
We’ve chastised commissioner Roger Goodell about the domestic violence issue for months, and concussions aren’t a sexy topic. The most successful franchise in the NFL possibly cheating to win a playoff game is sensationalistic and mindless. In other words, it’s perfect.
“Some people like old balls.” – Tom Brady, Jan. 22, 2015
That’s the world we live in now. The top stories aren’t necessarily the most important, but rather the most convenient. Why devote resources to uncover a complex scandal that actually matters – like the expectation that nearly one third of NFL players will lose their minds at some point – when you can go after cheap heat.
Deflate-Gate is a story about what may have happened in a football game. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s important to us sports fans, because we concern ourselves with this kind of minutia on a regular basis.
But now everyone knows how silly we are, and have even joined in themselves.
We’re exposed, and it’s no fun.
