Interested in a wager?
I’m not opposed.
Good, something else to mock you for. As if you hadn’t already provided enough material.
Well, one of us has become nearly universally reviled on the boards anyway.
Hi. I’ve been a casual New England fan since Steve Grogan was bouncing 100 mph passes off receivers’ facemasks five yards downfield, I have not made an exhaustive, or even a very energetic, study of the issues, and I once worked for some hard-core labor lawyers in a grotesquely anti-labor state, and this is what I think:
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The Patriots probably cheated by under-inflating (or minimally inflating on a cold day) several footballs in a playoff game. The probable cheating was certainly done to benefit Tom Brady’s preferences for squishier footballs, and was likely carried out Murder in the Cathedral style, (although, a genuine recording of either Brady or Belichik’s voice saying “will no one rid me of these air-greedy pigskins?” would be a joy) without anyone very important having to say anything directly for it to be carried out;
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The cheating, much like the cameras a while ago, had an insignificant impact on the game, so much so this time that the team made sure not to cheat with all the balls, which was good as their success with the legal balls was much greater.
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It’s still cheating. It’s playing the game without respect for the foundation of the game, which (whether it’s football, baseball, jai-alai or whist) is the rules under which it is played. And this is true even if (as I suspect) this episode itself was designed not to gain a tactical advantage in this game, but to (as I suspect) to completely discombobulate future opponents who must now be concerned not only about how to legally play the game, but how an opponent might not, and how to detect and counteract that, and whether and how* they* might cheat to win.
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So I’m ashamed of the Patriots for cheating and sullying games they would have won had they played them straight. Whether they did it from a lack of confidence (real hard to believe with Belichik and Brady) or just as another layer of gamesmanship (*real * easy to believe), it is disrespect for the game they are the foremost exponents of (swallow the grammar, please).
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However, there’s worse behavior afoot. The NFL investigating with an “independent” commission that was not, releasing inaccurate information to the media about the commission’s findings, not correcting it for several days, demanding an employee’s cell phone with no contractual or legal basis, punishing a team without contractual or legal basis, (rule book: 25K: NFL: ONE MILLION DOLLARS, plus draft picks); punishing an individual employee against contractual and legal rules. The fact that a member of a barely-legal hut incredibly profitable consortium accepts an illegal punishment isn’t very surprising, but, I gotta tell you: all that is a much worse blight on society than the Patriots winning a trophy. And, unlike anything else that happens here, a judge calling a halt to that crap will benefit hard working Americans everywhere.
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Bottom line: Patriots cheated, NFL cheated worse, and has been at it for a long time.
Hey! King of Soup! Where have you been? You’ve been missed.
Still having trouble grasping what’s happened to you, I see. Someday it will dawn on you. Maybe.
BTW, how’s that statistical analysis coming, Mr. Expert? Figured out how to run ANOVA yet?
King, the evidence does not support there having been *any *underinflation at all, despite the desperate need of some (see above) to continue believing in Wells’ honesty nevertheless, to help rationalize their childish hatred. Other than that, you’re right, although you could have gone on to mention other teams and what the “investigation” if any showed there.
You would say “how to run an ANOVA” if you weren’t an idiot and knew what you were talking about.
Hi, Hentor. You know how it is: I was working on a post, couldn’t think of a rhyme for “interminably dull pastiche,” and before I knew it a decade had come and gone. Nice to be here.
To me the funniest part is the special rule that allows every team to bring their own balls to the game in the first place (somewhere in the Carolinas, Gaylord Perry is thinking wrong place, wrong time). Once you’ve done that, the moralizing rings a tad hollow. It’s icing on the cake that Brady, proponent of said rule, actually said publically more than once that he was for the rule because he liked softer footballs. Some like 'em soft, some like 'em scuffed, some like a shallow spiral groove cut into them, some like 'em scented lightly with lavender. It doesn’t excuse the Patriots, but I understand the point of view that in a system where everybody gets to cheat a little bit, the real poor sportsmanship is for one of the willing participants in the scheme to suddenly call foul against an opponent.
I notice I have been consistently misspelling Bill Belichick’s name. Oops. At any rate, it does bother me to believe, as I do, that he’s willing to sacrifice a reputation for honesty for the strategic advantage of muddling his opponents’ thinking. I believe at this point he’d allow himself to be seen installing cameras on a snowplow with underinflated tires just for the joy of messing with the other coach and league officials. I also think Tom Brady came too late to the understanding that he does not enjoy that feeling. I also think both of them managed to share the obloquy with the whole team, and I don’t like that much.
The King of Soup, you have a little bit of a point about the sensibility of allowing teams to prep their balls as they like. But you’re wrong about the cheating part. It’s kind of like Pinewood Derby. Did you ever do Pinewood Derby? That’s a boy scout thing. There are rules about the length and weight of the cars, but apart from that you can prep your car however you like. It’s legal as long as it gets certified before the race by the judges for being within legal specs.
Tom Brady was sneaking extra lead washers on to his Pinewood Derby car after the judges had certified them. He is not a Trustworthy, Honest, or Clean scout.
So, no ANOVA or you’d know that is not true.
First Rule of Holes, Mr. Expert.
Hentor, I don’t think we’re disagreeing, really. I believe the Patriots underinflated some balls in violation of the rules, and that they did it because Tom Brady (and maybe other players who handled the ball) liked them that way. And I get that it should be possible to accommodate these preferences while still enforcing outer boundaries with respect to psi (I think it’s incredibly dumb, but I get it). I’m in a little trouble with ElvisL1ves because I believe this in the “Well, duh” sense rather than the “mathematically proven” sense, but I’m allowed to do that, I think. But I also think the existence of a rule allowing teams to provide and prepare their own game balls, manipulating the degree of inflation, surface smoothness, etc., trivializes the offense when the rule is broken/norms are exceeded. Not sure comparisons with soapbox derby (or to some degree NASCAR, I suppose) are apt because those endeavors are all about finding the allowable difference that confers advantage – that’s the whole point. In that sense, it’s more like those challenges bored physics teachers give their classes involving a box of drinking straws and an egg dropped from the school roof than a sports contest. And I’m absolutely clear in my conviction that the NFL behaved extremely badly throughout, and that colors my thinking some. But, simply, did the Patriots cheat? No argument from me there.
From that perspective, consider Jay Feely, a kicker. Kicker balls have much stricter rules about doctoring. Mainly that you can’t, as opposed to regular balls that can be doctored freely.
When the league found out that the Jets were doctoring kicker balls in 2009, what happened to their kicker Jay Feely? Nothing. They didn’t even investigate him.
This is pretty much nothing but sour grapes from whiners. The poster boy for that is of course Jerry Rice, who described his own cheating this way:
This is how he describes the Patriots cheating:
Nice hypocrisy there.
The King of Soup, we are in agreement as regards the rule. The equipment should be uniform for both teams. Give them an inch, and all that. The league should go back to the pre-Brady rule.
I stopped following this story, oh, eight months go, so I have a couple questions:
- Did the NFL take away the Patriots’ win?
- Can the new season start soon enough so you guys can find something new to argue about?
I think I woulda heard about #1 if it happened, and if the win stands you guys are pissing in the wind. For #2, as a bit of a baseball fan I know that this debate will continue for at least the next 75 years, but a guy can hope.
To me, right now the big issue in NFL-style football is whether it should be played at all, so I’m able to not sweat the small stuff so much.
Anyhow, reading the NFL rulebook is actually kind of fun. It looks as if it were written by extremely competent lawyers who had no idea what “sports” is, and it was then delivered for interpretation/execution to sports lovers who never learned legalese. For example, a “level playing field,” a phrase that is used axiomatically to denote fair play, is not mandated by the NFL, though they do have a lot to say about how thick the swath of whiteness surrounding the game (metaphor alert!) should be. Also, apparently you can do pretty much anything you want to a football except adjust its psi outside 12.5 - 13.5 or erase Roger Goodell’s signature, as long as its approximate weight, length and circumference are left intact. Rub it with sandpaper, boil it in maple syrup, bury it in peat for a year–all okay. As someone said, the real crime is what’s legal, but that just makes the guy who couldn’t manage to cheat within the rules look kinda stupid. Except if the point was just to put the thought into opponents’ heads, so they’d always be waiting for that second “gotcha” (with a nod at the old joke). I think the Patriots miscalculated for once. I think they figured underinflated footballs was going to make their quarterback happy, make zero real difference in the outcome of any game, and if it came out, drive their opponents crazy at very little cost ($25K for the equipment violation). And I understand the impulse to up the cost for this shoddy, shabby behavior. But in his effort to do that, Goodell violated lots of much more important rules than the one he was pretending to enforce, and for the sake of workers who need protection a lot more than Tom Brady does, I’m happy he got nabbed for it.
You can do that? Legally? No need to hide a bit of sandpaper to rough it up or some rosin to improve your grip? A lot of opportunity is left out there for the taking.
This is all the rules have to say about the ball:
[
](http://operations.nfl.com/the-rules/2015-nfl-rulebook#rule-2.-the-ball)
So theoretically, yeah, you can do whatever you want to the ball. I suspect that there might be a point that the ref says “hey, guy. Come on.” But technically you can doctor it as much as you want as long as it meets the basic specifications of dimension, weight, and inflation. And has Roger Goodell’s signature. That’s important.
The ref doesn’t see the balls until long after they’ve been doctored, a process that can take months.
See here for an article about how the Giants trainers prep balls for Eli.
Different sport, but I’ve always preferred how Yankees trainers would prepare Roger Clemens’ balls.