Goddell Throws the Book at Tom Brady, the Patriots

      I'm sure it would have been just as harsh if it were a different QB and team. I think Pats owner, Robert Kraft, nails it here:

     "Despite our conviction that there was no tampering with footballs, it was our intention to accept any discipline levied by the league. Today's punishment, however, far exceeded any reasonable expectation. It was based completely on circumstantial rather than hard or conclusive evidence."

    "We are humbled by the support the New England Patriots have received from our fans throughout the world. We recognize our fans' concerns regarding the NFL's penalties and share in their disappointment in how this one-sided investigation was handled, as well as the dismissal of the scientific evidence supported by the Ideal Gas Law in the final report.

   "Tom Brady has our unconditional support. Our belief in him has not wavered."

     http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000492249/article/kraft-punishment-far-exceeded-any-reasonable-expectation

     So a slightly deflated football merits 4 games, a $1 million dollar, losing both a 1st round draft pick in 2016, and 4th round pick in 2017. Boutygate comparatively cost the Saints only $500,000-this was where Saints players were paid a bounty for injuring opposing offensive playmakers. Deflategate is worse than that. 

    It's worse than the Falcons artificially increasing crowd noise-they didn't lose a first rounder. It's worse than what Ray Rice did to his fiance-who was initially fined just 2 games. 

    Keyshawn Johnson thinks that this fine was too light. The question that begs for me when I hear him say that is to ask him if he ever 'cheated.' 

   I feel the word 'cheater' is bandied about way too casually in sports these days. My question always is-ok, but who else is allegedly 'cheating?'

   Can you tell me that no other QBs do anything to improve the football's grip, or anything else to gain a tiny competitive advantage? Even Spygate made me skeptical-how do I know no other teams also do it-from what I've heard, trying to steal the signals of opposing teams is an very old NFL tradition. 

   I also think you have to contextualize things a little: yes, it's 'breaking the rules' but so is jaywalking, but does it deserve the same penalty as attempted murder? People who throw stones about cheating in sports usually don't draw this distinction. 

   At the end of the day, I know counterfactuals are hard but I think that had this been a different QB and different team it would not have been such a big deal. People love to see great players and teams brought low. That's all this is about. 

   P.S. I totally agree with Brady appealing this and hope he knocks a few games off-1 to 2 games is the most this should be. 

   A lot of people criticize him for not handing over his cell phone. Why should he? This is America and yet we don't know our own Constitution. No one has heard of due process or probable cause evidently. 

   I get so weary of this kind of rush to judgment over such silly things. Danny Kannell on Mike and Mike made the rather absurd comment that the rule about deflating the balls is a stupid rule anyway but that he still thinks that Brady is somehow tarnished. 

   It's what Bill James calls the Martha Stewart Syndrome-where people throw the book over jaywalking but not attempted murder; ie, Stewart was punished by the SEC but not all the Wall St. actors that made all that money in the subprime mess. 

.    "The people who sent Martha Stewart to jail were the people who were supposed to be watching Wall Street. They went after Martha Stewart because she was an easy target. Also, they didn’t understand financial derivatives. Nobody did; as it turned out, the people who were trading in them didn’t understand them, either. That’s why Lehman Bros. went bankrupt; they were trading in something they didn’t understand. So now it is Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds in the crosshairs of the prosecutors, and the question I would urge you to think about is not only “Are these people guilty?” It is also, “Is this prosecution necessary and appropriate?”

    "Who is it that these people are not watching? We know now, in retrospect, who the people who sent Martha to jail should have been watching. In 10 years, we will know who is robbing the candy store while the feds are chasing Roger. It is not our job to know that now; it is their job, and frankly they should go do it. Is it really necessary to send Babe Ruth to jail, to teach him a lesson about refusing to go to school and making off-color remarks at nice old ladies’ dinner parties and drinking during Prohibition? Or can we let him be Babe Ruth, arrogant and charming and irresponsible?"

     - See more at: http://www.gregoryforman.com/blog/2010/09/bill-james-american-exceptionalism-and-a-sense-of-perspective-and-vigilance/#sthash.5mreJq1v.dpuf

    Tom Brady is the latest 'scofflaw' to get 5 years in jail for jaywalking.