We're going to be hearing a lot about 'cheating' the next few weeks and months. There are already claims that everything Brady h as ever done is now tarnished as well as the 4 Super Bowls
I've always felt that the old timers that vote on the Baseball Hall of Fame were secretly delighted by the furor over steroids: after all, they can now claim that all the old records haven't really been broken after all. Old timers hate to see baseball records broken. Willie Mays sensibly points out that records are made to be broken but this is not the sentiment of the graybeards. Never has been-Maris was hated when he broke Ruth's record-there was literally an asterisk in the record books for over 30 years-and Hank Aaron received death threats.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/05/i-can-listen-to-rod-talk-all-day.html
Speaking of which, congratulations to A-Rod for breaking Mays' record tonight.
https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/baltimore-orioles-new-york-yankees-350507110/
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/eye-on-baseball/25177899/watch-a-rod-takes-sole-possession-of-4th-all-time-with-661st-career-homer
I think the same thing holds for all those who hate Brady, hate Bellichick, hate the Patriots for their success. They love this. Nothing better than watching a great QB and competitor like Tom Brady to his knees. The Brady haters get to sit back and act all outraged, keep saying 'Cheater, cheater, cheater' while demanding he undergo public penance.
Let's be honest here. Are you telling me if this was about say the Atlanta Falcons rather than the New England Patriots this would not be treated as a big deal. As a matter of fact, the Falcons have also been accused of cheating but no one cares. After all, this doesn't bring a great QB and team low. There's no story of comeuppance there.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-falcons-lose-draft-pick-crowd-noise-20150330-story.html
Atlanta has to pay a whopping $350,000 fine and loses a 5th round 2016 draft pick. I wonder if all those screaming 'cheater' will be satisfied by a similar fine for the Patriots.
Meanwhile, no one can tell me:
1. Just what kind of advantage having a 10.5 pound rather than a 12.5 pound ball do you get? I find it hard to believe it's very large.
2. Have any other QBs ever done anything like this?
When ever there's a scandal all the moral scolds become outraged when you try to bring any context into the situation. Doesn't everyone do this-bending the rules in small ways to gain some very narrow advantage that probably amounts to very little?
3. Everyone is dismissing Brady's agent, but he makes a good point:
"The Wells report, with all due respect, is a significant and terrible disappointment. It's omission of key facts and lines of inquiry suggest the investigators reached a conclusion first, and then determined so-called facts later. One item alone taints this entire report. What does it say about the league office's protocols and ethics when it allows one team to tip it off to an issue prior to a championship game, and no league officials or game officials notified the Patriots of the same issue prior to the game?"
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000491604/article/tom-bradys-agent-issues-response-to-ted-wells-report
Why was the league office in cahoots with Indy against the Patriots? Was there anything like probably cause to begin the inevstigagtion?
I have to disagree with the idea that Brady's legacy in tarnished. Of course, this won't please the Brady haters as the whole [oint of this exercise is to tarnish his legacy.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000491628/article/wells-report-threatens-tom-bradys-legacy-patriots-reputation
That this is the point is clear:
"The report released by Ted Wells on Wednesday did not produce a smoking gun explaining how theNew England Patriots' footballs came to be underinflated during the AFC Championship Game. It might have given us something more disconcerting, though: a creeping sense of disappointment, that the Patriots, as successful a franchise as exists in professional sports, might have again crossed the very fine line that separates gaining a competitive edge from cheating -- and, most disturbingly, that this time, one of the game's towering players, Tom Brady, was culpable and perhaps even lied.
To be clear, there is just enough vagueness in Wells' extensive report to give the NFL plenty of wiggle room and a lot to think about when pondering punishment in the coming days, with television executives and 31 other team owners peering over the shoulders of Troy Vincent and Commissioner Roger Goodell. There are a lot of "unlikelys" and "we believes" and "more probable than nots." But then, "more probable than not" is the NFL's threshold for finding violations of rules."
"Along with a heap of circumstantial evidence, there are also a few damning sentences that, for the first time in his extraordinary career, cast Brady as something less than the ideal figure we've all wanted to believe he is: the work-hard, do-right practitioner who has succeeded beyond even the wildest expectations because of a fearsome drive and sparkling intelligence. Thanks to words like "claims not plausible" and "contradicted by other evidence" and "declined to make available," Brady's honesty and legacy as a standard-bearer of greatness in football history are now up for reconsideration, thrown into the same pile as those of Bill Belichick; both are brilliant football men who many suspect also have flawed levels of fealty to the rules of fair play."
So many people just don't seem to even think at all. They hear the world 'cheating' and they go stark raving mad. They don't try to understand why a slightly undelfated football is the crime of the century. But though the report offers no actual proof. there is this rush to judgement, rush to declare a great QB tarnished.
It all says a lot more about the people grabbing this report and running with it than Brady-ditto steroid scolds regarding A-Rod.
P.S. I guess I come across has often being skeptical about hysterical cries of 'cheater' and the absurd jump to the conclusion that a great player's accomplishments are tarnished based on just some sentiment and circumstantial evidence.
I do sometimes take the side of those crying cheater: I agree that Manny Pacquiao defrauded the public.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/05/mayweather-as-boxer-of-pacifists.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/05/mayweather-pacquiao-marketing-job-of.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
What irritates me about most people on these kinds of scandals is they seem unable to distinguish between a felony and jaywalking. You'd think that Brady is Manson because he used a slightly deflated QB. It's absurd to be unable to distinguish but the moral scolds clearly can't.
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