Of course not. Cheating is when you break the rules to obtain a competitive advantage. We can all hem and haw about whether letting air out of the balls actually makes any difference, but Brady obviously believed it did.
Fair enough.
I’m going to tilt at this windmill one more time and walk away. Battered but not defeated. 
Humans as a group have a unique way of dealing with rules or even laws they consider unfair. We all did it at home. We were supposed to be in by 10 pm. So we came in at 10:15. Bending the rules as much as we could get away with. A good example is Carter’s double nickle. The vast majority of drivers wouldn’t drive that slowly. They bent the rules driving 60 or 62. Authorities could have written a million tickets a day across the nation. But wisely realized that was impractical. They tolerated a little speeding. It depended on the cop. Sometimes they were very strict.
Sports is no different. Coaches have scouted their opponents since day 1. Scoutinting practices is part of the game. Sending a friend, acquaintance or even a sports reporter to watch a team practice and report back. All the coaches knows it happens. I agree, Belichick took it too far by filming. Just like at home when you came in at 10:40 and got chewed out for breaking curfew. He bent the rules too much.
I see inflation gate the same way. Fine, Brady broke some rule. I suspect a lot of quarterback on other teams have adjusted the pressure on their game balls too. Brady took it too far. The game balls that day were very noticeably flat. Slap him with a one game suspension and lets move on. Now all the quarterbacks are all put on notice that the league is serious in enforcing the ball inflation rule.
I can’t explain why most people push boundaries. Chafe at rules. That’s just how humans react. It’s why Prohibition failed. Its why the Marijuana laws are doomed to fail. Humans learned thousands of years ago that its safer to find a way to skirt around some onerous rules than it is to actually fight and change them.
That’s it for my day as Don Quixote. I’ll retreat now before this windmill knocks me on my butt.
I don’t think anybody is suggesting that Brady be particularly harshly punished for this. As to the general question of why he should follow the rule, even if you think it’s a stupid rule, is that most people are following the rule, therefore he is gaining an unfair advantage by not following the rule. The point of rules in games is to maintain competitive balance. Speed limits and curfews are not good analogies.
Also, Belichick never videotaped practices. He videotaped defensive signals from the sideline during games. The allegation of videotaping practices was discredited.
Your persistence, despite being ill-informed or wrong, is a consistent source of inspiration for others on this board, i’m sure.
Why? This renders your whole argument completely ridiculous.
If it’s OK to spy, why isn’t it OK to spy while holding a camera? Why do you get to determine where the line of “too much” is? Why not draw that line at the place where the rules say it is, rather than at some unspecified place that you, in your wisdom, happen to find acceptable?
Because Tom Brady pushed for it. Weird, huh?
We don’t live in a black and white world. There are infinite shades of gray. Rules can be bent and not broken. Each person has their own definition for where that line is and of course the person or organization enforcing the rule decides what behavior they will accept.
Happens all the time in sports. B-ball How hard can I foul a guy with getting called for it? How much can I block the lane without getting called? What will draw a charging call? Baseball - how close can the pitcher throw towards the batter without getting called? The strategy is make the batter flinch without getting called for it or actually hitting the guy. Athletes make these decisions dozens of times in every game.
The league has decided to come down on ball inflation. We’ll have to see how much they care. If they really care. Then the referee should provide the game balls. Aired up exacty like the league wants. That eliminates any hint of tampering by the teams.
Except not. The NFL does have a black and white rule. It does, with great specificity, outline what behavior is accepted and what is not. There is no gray area with this rule.
Now, if you want to whine about the enforcement of the rule, yeah, you have a point. They do their checks beforehand, but a test isn’t done before every play. At some point, the NFL relies on people to follow the rules without having to be constantly checked and tested and watched like a hawk to make sure they’re doing everything exactly according to the rules. Some people are willing to take advantage of that. People like Tom Brady and Bill Bellicheck and Sean Peyton and many others. So now, thanks to the Pats, the NFL will crack down on that rule until some team (gosh anyone want to speculate on which are the likely teams?) finds another way to break another rule.
I think, at a minimum, Brady ought to be stripped of the win and all wins after. Including the S.B. Brady should lose any money he received for the wins. Brady should be suspended for a year.
I am absolutely tired of politicians, athletes and business people breaking the rules, getting a slap on the wrist and facing no real consequences. It is time to make cheating hurt. I don’t care how big of an actual affect the balls had. Brady thought it was enough to cheat over. Since Brady thought it was important enough to cheat the punishment ought to be harsh enough to make Brady, and everyone else who may think of cheating, think again.
Of course, that. won’t happen.
Slee
That’s just silly. There is no way that the deflation changed the outcome of the Colts game, and a year suspension for one minor rule breaking would be so out of whack with the reality of any minor advantage he gained.
I’ll guess the Falcons and the Browns. But of course we don’t have multiple multi-page threads about any other cheating franchises except the Patriots, because the Patriot hate is fully grounded in objective critcism. No axes to grind at all, nope, nada.
Of course that moronic idea won’t happen, agreed.
What’s your point? Yes, I agree. The Patriots garner much more hate than the Falcons, who mainly get “who?”, and the Browns who mainly get pity. I don’t think anyone would argue that the Patriots are right up there with the Cowboys as the most hated team in the NFL.
And?
The fact they’re hated changes absolutely nothing about their cheating or the actions of Tom Brady. Sure it changes the amount of attention and vehemence they get when they do cheat, but, at the end of the day, it doesn’t change the fact that they did.
How is this a puzzle? If someone cheats and loses, yeah people don’t like it, but they don’t get terribly worked up.
If someone cheats and wins, people get more upset.
How does someone struggle to understand this?
I think Brady has cheated like this for almost a decade. I think it has helped not only with his passing success, but also with the Patriots fumble rates. That’s a lot of cheating, and it’s impacted a lot of people. Of course that pisses me off.
The Falcons and Browns got punished. The reason we have multipage threads about this cheating is primarily that a lot of people didn’t think it happened and that if it did, it didn’t matter. Look at the OP:
Hardly “OMG I can’t believe they did this!” If you’d started a thread about whether pumping in crowd noise matters, it would probably have some responses. Same for whatever it was the Browns did (breaking the league’s futility rule, possibly?)
I think we should resume this excellent, productive discussion next December, when we can look at the Patriots’ record, Brady’s QB rating, and the Patriots’ fumble stats for the 2015 season.
Those of us with “an ax to grind” because this gave such a miniscule advantage, if any, predict that those numbers will all be very different next season than they have been in recent seasons. I’m sure we’ll still be haters and whiners for some reason. Can’t wait to hear what the reason is.
And they did so without their owner demanding an apology, ignoring the science in the completed report, and whining the entire way. And they did so with their players co-operating with the investigation instead of refusing to turn over texts. And they did so, at least here, without their defenders making asses of themselves repeatedly.
FTR, I rooted for the Patriots during the S.B. I am not a particularly huge fan but I really disliked the Seahawks.
As far as the punishment I recommend being silly? I guess it depends on what you think about cheating. I believe that cheating ought to be unacceptable no matter how much of an advantage the cheating gives the cheater. Brady thought it was a big enough deal to cheat. He conspired with others to cheat. During the investigation Brady refused to cooperate. The NFL has a rule about that, by the way, which reads:
“Failure to cooperate in an investigation shall be considered conduct detrimental to the League and will subject the offending club and responsible individual(s) to appropriate discipline.”
All those things add up to a giant ‘Fuck the rules’ from Brady. The way to deal with that is make the punishment hurt.
As for the year suspension being moronic? Well, the according to some reports the NFL may not think so. Link.
Slee
I agree. Lets see Brady’s stats after playing with carefully monitored balls. It will be quite obvious if this makes any difference in his effectiveness or the final outcomes of the Patriot’s future games.
I apologize if I was a bit obstinate on this issue. I looked around on Google and couldn’t find a similar case where a game football was formally investigated. It appears league enforcement was fairly relaxed. Balls are checked before the game. The Referees handle the ball after every play when they spot it. Referees replace any bad balls during the game. That could be because its muddy, very wet or seems too soft.
Enforcement will be tighter in the future. It’ll be interesting to see what procedures they implement
This will be excellent motivation for the Patriots to play even better next year. Show everybody that a few extra ounces of air didn’t win all those trophys.
The hyperbole began in this thread on post #23 (before my first post), but I personally was also responding to all the over-the-top hyperbole in the media. I view it as ridiculous and embarrassing.
I also disagree with your first point. I think the only reason we have multipage threads about it is specifically because it’s the Patriots. I honestly do believe that that is literally the only reason.
Well, in that without the Pats we would not have Elvis, I’ll give you that…