I know the title will confused many people. But its mainly to drive home a point. I was thinking about this whole ordeal with Tom Brady and deflate gate. I really wanted to see past my bias and understand those who say this isn't a big deal. What I found is that I really can't. I don't hate Tom Brady, he is a great QB, no one denies that. No, I don't want his wife, my taste are more so of a Beyonce type before she got skinny. So I'm not jealous of Tom at all. I just can't see how this isn't a big deal and here is why. Let's do a thought experiment.
Instead of the New England Patriots being the focus of this scandal, lets propose that it is instead the New York Yankees. Instead of Tom Brady ordering deflated football, lets imagine Alex Rodriguez ordering his bats to be corked. The ball boys take the bats without anyone knowing and have them corked before the American League Championship game. Alex hits a home run before in the middle of the 4th inning they find out the bats are corked. They take away the bats and issue new bats that aren't corked. Alex then proceeds to hit another home run in the 8th inning. Yankees win, thhhhhheeeeeeee Yankees win and go to the world series. Alex won't confirm or deny that he ever did this, but we do find the bat boy's text messages implicating him. What would the reaction be then by Red Sox fans? I imagine it would be quit different.
Who would jump to Alex's defense in saying that well the bats were only a little corked, he still hit a home run with the new bats, Alex would never do this!!!! Yea, none of those things would ever happen. We'd crucify Alex for what he'd done, and rightfully so. I get that this isn't a perfect analogy but it is a fitting one. In almost every situation in sports cheating, however slight, is met with harsh ridicule and punishment. Just recently we had the little league world series runners up from Chicago have their wins revoked when it was found that a couple of their players lived outside the newly drawn districts and shouldn't have been on the team.
One manager and parent was so disgusted that he lead the charge in uncovering their cheating. He lives in Arizona. His team also got crushed by the Chicago team. I'm sure he didn't care to hear about how the newly drawn districts were unfairly redrawn or how his team was beat so badly it likely wouldn't have mattered if those players were on the team or not. All that mattered was that they 'cheated' and he was going to uncover it, and he did.
With this in mind the Patriots got off light. There punishment would have been way more severe had it happen in another venue. MLB, NCAA, both would have taken away their title. The NFL is not out to get you patriot fans, people aren't jealous of your success, mostly. This is just what happens when you get caught. You got caught now just deal with the punishments.
The wording of the wells report doesn't matter, more probable than not is the legal burden of proof for civil cases. It doesn't matter if the gauges were correct or what the actual pressure of the balls were. The only thing that matters is the fact that those balls were removed from the playing field and were altered. Then the Patriots took steps to cover it up and lied about what they did. There were obviously some kind of foul play occurring, otherwise why remove the footballs at all, just do what you have to do out in the open, in front of everyone. If this were anyone else, on any other team, Boston fans would be the first ones frothing at the mouth for suspensions, revoking wins and banners.
The fact is any amount of cheating, how ever little the advantage gained, must be met with harsh punishments. Why because as soon as you let one thing go, people will push to break the next rule. The league has built their riches on the image of integrity of the game. How many people do you think will bet on football if they believe that each team aren't on a fair playing field? Why would anyone watch the games? Sure some people love the soap opera that his wrestling. But WWE isn't a 10 billion dollar league. The NFL isn't where it is by taking the rules lightly. The fact is Brady is at it again! And the NFL has to make sure that Brady and the Patriots stop their cheating ways.
