What effect is DeflateGate having on professional football as a whole.
I’m not debating whether or not Tom Brady is guilty. However, co-worker came up with an interesting point that Goodell should drop the issue. Not because Brady is innocent, but because the scandal is affecting professional football as a whole and Goodell’s job is to promote the profitability of professional football. Or are the other owners pressing Goodell to hold Brady accountable and Goodell is merely following the wishes of his stockholders?
The NFL is going to make money hand over fist this year. There’s pretty much nothing Goodell can do to screw that up via Deflategate.
And this is from a Pats fan who thinks this whole Deflategate thing is smoke and mirrors, a railroading of Brady. It’s going to piss off fans in New England, it will probably make the next CBA negotiations more interesting, and should make for some interesting story lines. I think the whole thing is stupid, but it’s not affecting the NFL as a whole.
Deflategate will have no real impact, other than to keep the sports talking heads focused on the NFL during baseball season. The league will not suffer in revenue or popularity due to this.
Football is going down in the long term, but not because Tom Brady deflated a few balls. It will be because of the enormous likelihood of brain injuries and long term disability. Basically, the same thing that happened to boxing. It’s not going to happen this year, but I’ll bet by 2040, professional American football will be a shadow of itself.
The phony Deflategate scandal and aftermath are a boon to the NFL. It continues to distract the public from the ‘Dain Bramage’ scandal and convinces the fans of second rate teams that their teams had a chance if the footballs had a little more air in them.
The goal of the NFL owners is NOT to win games. The goal is NOT to please the fans. They are a business. And like Boeing, Apple, and IBM, their goal is to make money, as much money as their customers (you fans) will pay. They happen to make money by getting the fans so excited that the fans don’t care how much a ticket costs or how much advertising they must watch on TV on televised games because fans can’t fast-forward when they’re watching live TV. They don’t put on a whiz-bang half-time show at the Superbowl for your benefit. They do it to make more money. They’re all money-grubbing businessmen. That’s my mindset.
Yes, I know that the NFL will make a bundle this year. The question is: Is DeflateGate going to add or subtract dollars from that bundle? Or is Goodell under orders to “Get Brady” from NFL stockholders?
Sorry, but this is overly cynical BS. You think somebody who owns a football team really doesn’t want a Super Bowl ring? Of course they do. Look at Paul Allen at the beginning of playoff games. He’s like a little kid ringing the twelfth man bell. Even Daniel Snyder, detested by nearly all Washingtonians, wants to win football games. He sucks at being an owner, but part of what makes him suck is his micromanagement of the team. If all he wanted to do was make cash, he’d sit back and let the GM run things for him. (Which is what smart owners do.)
Also, getting back to the OP, fans know that in any sport some cheating will occur. That’s not going to drive them away. What will drive them away is a league that turns a blind eye to it, causing a race to the bottom where teams that wouldn’t otherwise cheat have to in order to compete.
I don’t think it will have much of an impact either way, but if it does, it will make them money. Just think about the sheer number of hours this story has been covered on TV, often during times when other sports would be in the spotlight.
The only way this ends badly for the owners is if the issue of player discipline becomes such a sticking point during the next CBA that they go on strike. But even that would be unlikely to have any long term downsides for the game as a whole. The fact is Tom Brady and the Pats are not particularly well liked within the league, and few players or owners are going to risk their livelihood to stand up for him.
Yeah, I think that’s the only real potential negative for the NFL that can come out of it. It’s become very apparent that the players got absolutely smoked when it came to negotiating the last CBA… will be interesting to see if they remember when it comes time to re-negotiate in (I believe) 2021.
(On the other hand, with so much money available, I suppose it’s not surprising when all they can do is threaten a work stoppage and not make any money)
The only way it might would be if Goodell did what the OP suggests. Favoritism to the Pats (and make no mistake, that’s exactly what the perception would be) would be viewed harshly by the rest of the team’s fans. The Johnnie Cochrans I mean Pats fans would rejoice, but no one else would.
JohnnyAce said exactly what I was going to. You don’t make a scandal go away by ignoring it. You make it go away by investigating it, punishing the people involved as appropriate, and making sure it doesn’t happen again.
I question what the scandal really is here, since it doesn’t appear to be deflating footballs. The NFL had a chance to take pressure measurements all of last season and they either chose not to do so or didn’t like the results they got. So whatever they are doing, IMO, it isn’t a proper investigation into determining what happened. If they wanted to make sure this isn’t an issue, they would have just put the NFL in charge of the footballs.
Having said that, outside of New England, no one really cares about all that and it’s not going to damage the NFL in any meaningful way. People are going to continue watching the NFL in huge numbers and this isn’t going to keep any eyeballs off the TV screens.
That’s right - this is the entertainment industry. All publicity is good publicity.
Any damage to the business can only come from Goodell’s arrogance and cluelessness, but even he lacks the authority to do any more damage to the Money Machine than a howler monkey could.
Except it was. We’ve hashed the issue into the ground and I see ElvisL!ves is here, so any discussion of it would devolve quickly, but Deflategate would have never happened if the Patriots didn’t deflate the balls. You can attempt, and many a Pats fan has, that the measurements weren’t precise enough, or the particular items used to test them weren’t certified, or whatever other desperation move you want to make, as if it were a murder prosecution rather than a simple investigation, but none of that changes the texts, the disappearance of the balls, or the attempt by the Pats to game the system. It never would have been more than the same old minor infraction that gets handled like many others, except the Pats dug in their heels, destroyed phones, and turned it into a media circus.
None of which really matters. They got docked their first round pick, Brady is suspended, and life will go on. The NFL will continue to make money, the Pats will continue to be the Pats, and no one, outside of a rabid, nonsensical fan base, will really give a shit anymore.
