Brady Wins

[Legaltitan]

Honestly, I could care less about deflated footballs. It matters less than doctoring baseballs. He should've been warned, that's it. "Like, this is what we believe you're doing, stop it, we're watching."

Exactly.

But we can go one step further.   We know the NFL was tipped off before the Colts game to watch for this.  If we take the NFL at their word that deflated footballs is a super serious issue and affects the "integrity of the game," why the fuck didn't they do just what you suggest here, and warn the Patriots before the Colts game?  Why not keep the footballs with them after inspecting them, rather than letting them disappear with a Patriots equipment manager? The answer seems pretty simple.  For whatever reason, the NFL thought it was more important to "catch" Brady/The Patriots.  Playing amateur cops was more important to them than the integrity of the game.  And this was a fucking AFC championship game.

So which is it?  Is a deflated football really not that big of a deal like it seems to most, or is it a super duper big deal justifying all this shit and a $3M investigation? Because, if it's the latter, then Goodell is stupider than we thought because he allowed the Patriots to play an entire half of football in the AFC championship game with possibly deflated footballs.

[Jamalisms]

For those who have been following the NFL much longer than I have, has there ever been a commissioner with as many blemishes on his record? I mean, I'm honestly surprised he's kept his job this long. So many controversies with him at the center of so many of them.

He's doing as the owners want in almost all of this, protecting them from various legal woes and risks (bountygate was all about the retirees and concussions) and in this case is possibly fighting a war on behalf of some owners against another. That he is the face of these things protects the league. Once they sacrifice him, after paying him tens of millions of dollars, they can wipe the slate clean by getting rid of the bad man and appointing someone else to oversee a league that has moved past some of these battles.

No, there isn't someone like this in the past. Goodell is cleaning up or otherwise settling messes that the league and past commissioners ignored... and he's doing it in a way that makes himself the scapegoat.

[pat]

He's doing as the owners want in almost all of this, protecting them from various legal woes and risks (bountygate was all about the retirees and concussions) and in this case is possibly fighting a war on behalf of some owners against another. That he is the face of these things protects the league. Once they sacrifice him, after paying him tens of millions of dollars, they can wipe the slate clean by getting rid of the bad man and appointing someone else to oversee a league that has moved past some of these battles.

No, there isn't someone like this in the past. Goodell is cleaning up or otherwise settling messes that the league and past commissioners ignored... and he's doing it in a way that makes himself the scapegoat.

Ah yes another incarnation of that old TitansReport chestnut... the SMOKESCREEN!
 

[Jamalisms]

You're focused on wanting him to be guilty. I'm telling you guilt never mattered to me. Right and wrong matter. Doing things right and doing things wrong. And in this case the NFL was wrong. I don't know if Brady was right or wrong.

It was overreach, and the ruling points that out and proves it. So, let's get technical:

This is directly from the transcript:

 "principal question for the reviewing court is whether the arbitrator's award draws its essence from the collective bargaining agreement, since the arbitrator is not free to merely dispense his own brand of industrial justice." 

"The Court finds that Brady had no notice that he could receive a four-game suspension for general awareness of ball deflation by others or participation in any scheme to deflate footballs, and non-cooperation with the ensuing Investigation. Brady also had no notice that his discipline would be the equivalent of the discipline imposed upon a player who used performance enhancing drugs. During the August 19, 2015 oral argument, it became apparent that no specific determination was made either in the Vincent's Disciplinary Decision Letter or the Goodell Award as to what portion of Brady's discipline was attributable to alleged ball tampering and what discipline was attributable to non-cooperation (and, for that matter, what discipline was attributable to the destruction of Brady's phone):

Q [Court]: "So which of the four games [suspension] is attributable to ball tampering, and which is attributable to failure to cooperate?"

A [Nash]:  "Well, the Award doesn't specify, and I don't believe there's any requirement in the CBA to break it down that way. I think the Commissioner makes a judgment, and he says this in the Award, he says taking the record as a whole, considering all of the factors, he determined that a four-game suspension was the appropriate sanction." 

OVERREACH. He thought he could pull suspensions out of thin air for what he believed. It doesn't work that way. If you're going to rule in this way, you better have definitive rules. You can't do whatever you want.

I'm focused on responding to your specific comment:

"There's no smoking gun. The judge said it himself and he was trying to hint to the NFL that without that, they were going to lose"

I'm not certain what you're focused on but it's at best tangential to the original point.

[OILERMAN]

Goodell was trying to repair his joke of an image, not protect the integrity of the league or hand out fair punishment

It backfired

[big2033]

He's doing as the owners want in almost all of this, protecting them from various legal woes and risks (bountygate was all about the retirees and concussions) and in this case is possibly fighting a war on behalf of some owners against another. That he is the face of these things protects the league. Once they sacrifice him, after paying him tens of millions of dollars, they can wipe the slate clean by getting rid of the bad man and appointing someone else to oversee a league that has moved past some of these battles.

No, there isn't someone like this in the past. Goodell is cleaning up or otherwise settling messes that the league and past commissioners ignored... and he's doing it in a way that makes himself the scapegoat.

I believe the Commish has convinced ownership that he's cleaning up messes. The especially comes from the concussion issue.

But in protecting the shield he's been on a slippery slope for a while. His rulings have been based on public reaction, where it has to be black and white based on rules they create in collective bargaining.

[Jamalisms]

Ah yes another incarnation of that old TitansReport chestnut... the SMOKESCREEN!

 

While we here at TR pride ourselves on accuracy, this is a broadly discussed point nationally. We can not take sole credit.

Andrew Brandt has been all over this for some time now, including in his wide-ranging, fair and nuanced article today:

 

The Piñata

As I often say about Goodell, part of his role is take public relations hits so that his bosses, the owners, don’t have to. In last year’s domestic violence firestorm, team owners Steve Bisciotti, Zygi Wilf and Jerry Richardson, respectively, applied no discipline to Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy. Yet it was Goodell who—according to courts and arbitrations—overdisciplined all three and received the brunt of public criticism about lax treatment of the issue.

While Goodell certainly does not help himself with his robotic, corporate public persona and unrevealing platitudes, he willingly receives a disproportionate amount of criticism compared to the actions, or inactions, of those instructing him to carry out their orders. Again, all part of the job.

This Deflategate mess is another example of Goodell and the league office taking the fall publicly for carrying out orders for the owners. The NFL did not sit around after the AFC Championship Game and say, “Hey, let’s investigate the Patriots!” Rather, the league investigated the Patriots because the Colts—and, I would assume, others— asked/requested/demanded that it do so. Colts owner Jim Irsay is one of “the 32” whom Goodell serves.

And in this day and age, when the NFL investigates, it really investigates.  After being chastised for its insufficient investigatory process by both the Mueller Report and Judge Jones in the Rice disciplinary process, the NFL has now gone to the other extreme. While many have vilified the Wells Report, including Judge Berman’s questioning of some omissions—he opined, “Mr. Wells is a smart man, correct?”—the investigation did not lack resources. In this post-Rice-video era, time and cost of investigations are not an issue for the NFL.

Every NFL team possesses a healthy dose of paranoia that it does not receive equal treatment from the league office, for whatever reason. (In Green Bay we always felt underserved because there is no owner.) Further, teams have felt over the years that certain franchises receive preferential treatment from the league, one of those being the Patriots. There has been, and still is from what I am told, a perception among team executives that the Patriots always play to the edge with competitive requirements such as pre-game injury reporting and in-game formations and were able to “get away with it” because of the close relationship between Goodell and Robert Kraft. Certainly, two of the teams with Patriots paranoia have been the Colts and Ravens; we know the former demanded an inquiry into deflated footballs, and we suspect the latter did as well. I would guess several other teams are smugly satisfied that Goodell or the league office spent the resources they did to investigate the Patriots. And statements like those this week from Texans owner Bob McNair, who commented on the Patriots’ lack of cooperation and maintained that J.J. Watt would never cheat, further echo that sentiment.

Thus, while Goodell may have lost a solid ally in Kraft—although I am skeptical that he actually has lost his support—he has likely scored points with several owners in his strong stance against a perceived favorite. While there have been scattered reports about some owners being unhappy with the length of the investigation, we have not yet seen one owner publicly state anything other than full support of Goodell. While the public, fans and media have their fun mocking and excoriating Goodell, his bosses have supported him and compensated him handsomely.

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/09/01/nfl-deflategate-decision-roger-goodell-tom-brady-judge-berman

[big2033]

AndrewAndrew Brandt has been all over this for some time now, including in his wife-ranging, fair and nuancednuanced article today:

 

The Piñata

As I often say about Goodell, part of his role is take public relations hits so that his bosses, the owners, don’t have to. In last year’s domestic violence firestorm, team owners Steve Bisciotti, Zygi Wilf and Jerry Richardson, respectively, applied no discipline to Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy. Yet it was Goodell who—according to courts and arbitrations—overdisciplined all three and received the brunt of public criticism about lax treatment of the issue.

While Goodell certainly does not help himself with his robotic, corporate public persona and unrevealing platitudes, he willingly receives a disproportionate amount of criticism compared to the actions, or inactions, of those instructing him to carry out their orders. Again, all part of the job.

This Deflategate mess is another example of Goodell and the league office taking the fall publicly for carrying out orders for the owners. The NFL did not sit around after the AFC Championship Game and say, “Hey, let’s investigate the Patriots!” Rather, the league investigated the Patriots because the Colts—and, I would assume, others— asked/requested/demanded that it do so. Colts owner Jim Irsay is one of “the 32” whom Goodell serves.

And in this day and age, when the NFL investigates, it really investigates.  After being chastised for its insufficient investigatory process by both the Mueller Report and Judge Jones in the Rice disciplinary process, the NFL has now gone to the other extreme. While many have vilified the Wells Report, including Judge Berman’s questioning of some omissions—he opined, “Mr. Wells is a smart man, correct?”—the investigation did not lack resources. In this post-Rice-video era, time and cost of investigations are not an issue for the NFL.

Every NFL team possesses a healthy dose of paranoia that it does not receive equal treatment from the league office, for whatever reason. (In Green Bay we always felt underserved because there is no owner.) Further, teams have felt over the years that certain franchises receive preferential treatment from the league, one of those being the Patriots. There has been, and still is from what I am told, a perception among team executives that the Patriots always play to the edge with competitive requirements such as pre-game injury reporting and in-game formations and were able to “get away with it” because of the close relationship between Goodell and Robert Kraft. Certainly, two of the teams with Patriots paranoia have been the Colts and Ravens; we know the former demanded an inquiry into deflated footballs, and we suspect the latter did as well. I would guess several other teams are smugly satisfied that Goodell or the league office spent the resources they did to investigate the Patriots. And statements like those this week from Texans owner Bob McNair, who commented on the Patriots’ lack of cooperation and maintained that J.J. Watt would never cheat, further echo that sentiment.

Thus, while Goodell may have lost a solid ally in Kraft—although I am skeptical that he actually has lost his support—he has likely scored points with several owners in his strong stance against a perceived favorite. While there have been scattered reports about some owners being unhappy with the length of the investigation, we have not yet seen one owner publicly state anything other than full support of Goodell. While the public, fans and media have their fun mocking and excoriating Goodell, his bosses have supported him and compensated him handsomely.

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/09/01/nfl-deflategate-decision-roger-goodell-tom-brady-judge-berman

So is it about integrity or is it about what the teams want? Because in terms of integrity he actually hurt the brand and has been hurting it. Again, it's a slippery slope.

By his own definition he's doing a bad job.

[wtenn]

For those who have been following the NFL much longer than I have, has there ever been a commissioner with as many blemishes on his record? I mean, I'm honestly surprised he's kept his job this long. So many controversies with him at the center of so many of them.

There have only been 3 commissioners since the 1960s, so I would say no.  Tagliabue was so low-profile you barely knew he was there.  Rozelle had some moments, like two players strikes and a heated battle over the Raiders relocation to LA.  Rozell enjoyed almost universal support, though, because he was considered the driving force behind the leagues tremendous expansion in popularity during his tenure.  

[Jamalisms]

That article is really long and covered a lot of aspects. I only quoted a small piece. I don't know what Goodell really thinks but his general role and the impetus behind this case is clear. It's an internal war.

[wtenn]

I just read on that Twitter that the two team employees suspended for deflate-gate will be required to serve their suspensions.

[scine09]

So is it about integrity or is it about what the teams want? Because in terms of integrity he actually hurt the brand and has been hurting it. Again, it's a slippery slope.

By his own definition he's doing a bad job.

How exactly is he doing a bad job?  His job is to make money for the owners.  Has he done that?  How has revenue done with Goodell in control?  How are the TV contracts looking?  

[Jamalisms]

Of course they will. So was Sean Peyton after  bounty gate got overturned. No CBA protecting them.

[big2033]

How exactly is he doing a bad job?  His job is to make money for the owners.  Has he done that?  How has revenue done with Goodell in control?  How are the TV contracts looking?  

LOL TV contracts. Answer me this, which sport in the world, any sport is not making money on TV deals right now. I saw the other day the World Series of Cricket is on ESPN. We're in a different world. Access has created demand. Every commish is doing well when it comes to revenue and TV.

He's hurt the integrity of the game more than any player has IMO. I don't trust the product he puts on field is fair. I just know the product he puts on field is meant to make money. That's not "protecting the shield" that's "protecting the owners."

[Mythos27]

You know, I really liked Godell when he first came on the scene as a "law and order" commissioner who was willing to swing the big stick but once I realized he was just making up punishments as he went along , regardless of what the existing guidelines outlined, I lost some respect for him. This whole ordeal ended up pretty much how I expected and it's why I wanted it to go to court. A lot of ugly has been uncovered.