Deflategarte: Our Long National Nightmare Continues

So it’s come to this: the NFL’s disciplinary process is so bad that a court won’t even let them punish someone who is obviously guilty.  The U.S. District Court hearing the NFL suit to uphold its suspension of Tom Brady decided that the NFL process wasn’t fair, and ruled that Brady shouldn’t be punished for his role in Deflategate.

Let’s start by establishing his guilt.  Brady said in a Facebook post that the Patriots “did nothing wrong.”  That is a bald-faced lie, unless Brady is contesting that 11 of the 12 game balls in the possession of the Patriots were NOT underinflated when turned over to referees, a claim for which there would be no evidence if anyone were making it.  The rule says the team has to provide the NFL with 12 properly inflated footballs; they did not, and thus broke the rule.  The reason WHY the balls were underinflated, be in Patriots equipment manager or the Ideal Gas Law, is irrelevant.

Was it deliberate or negligence?  Well, given that the Patriots have an employee whose job title is “The Deflator” it is kind of hard for them to make the case that they did not deflate footballs.  Also, if atmospheric conditions were responsible, why weren’t the Colts balls similarly deflated?  Clearly, the Patriots were up to something.

But were Brady’s fingerprints on the murder weapon?  First of all, it is dubious that a low level employee would tamper with game equipment without at least thinking that he had the approval, tacit or overt, from either Coach Bill Bellicheck or star Tom Brady.  There is also the fact that Brady said he was ignorant of how footballs are inflated, yet lobbied for the rule change that put teams in charge of inflating the balls.

And Tom Brady destroyed his cell phone.  That’s a confession.  Unless you believe that innocent people destroy evidence that proves their innocence just because it would be too easy to win that way.

Brady is guilty.  That’s guilty, guilty guilty (apologies to Gary Trudeau).

Was a four game suspension absurd overkill?  Yes!  Was the fact-finding process flawed?  Obviously!  Will the judge’s decision be upheld on appeal?  Well, maybe not.

The judge was reacting to the obvious, indefensible lack of due process in the NFL, er, process.  The “independent” investigator (air quotes provided by the judge) was essentially an NFL employee.  Roger Goodell decided the original verdict, then presided over the appeal.  While being a witness.  Goodell did what Goodell always does, made up the rules as he went along without any thought of common sense or propriety.  This was why Ray Rice was suspended two games, then indefinitely, then 6 games for the same crime.

But the judge wasn’t being asked to evaluate the fairness of the decision.  He was being asked if the NFL Commissioner’s office had exceeded the scope of its disciplinary power as defined by the collective bargaining agreement, and the answer to that question is no.  The union cheerfully gave Goodell almost unilateral authority to decide disciplinary matters, whether fairly or unfairly.  Maybe in the next CBA the union can get the NFL to agree to some basic due process rights.  But that is not what is in the current CBA.

Of course when the 2^nd Circuit overturns the decision Brady will be retired on an island in the Caribbean.  In the meantime, the NFL HAS NO DISCIPLANARY PROCESS.  Any player, suspended or fined for any reason, can go to court and ask that it be overturned, citing the same procedural flaws Brady did.  They may not always win, but given the chaos in the Commissioner’s office, they’ll win enough.

In response to the question of whether Goodell should be fired, many have pointed out that won’t happen as long as the NFL keeps makes money. But is Goodell responsible for that, or would the NFL money train continue if a manatee were making decisions as commissioner?  Goodell is paid $45 million a year, and has now botched several disciplinary cases in a row, with the latest leaving the NFL without an effective process for enforcing rules like the ones mandating ball inflation pressures.  It must be great to make $45 million a year and not get fired no matter how much you screw up or how many mistakes you make.

Several folks on ESPN have said that there was “no evidence Brady did anything wrong.”  These people live in a post-Ray Rice world where if it isn’t on tape, it didn’t happen.  Clarence Darrow told a story about a lawyer who defended a man accused of biting another man’s ear off.  The only witness in the case was asked if he saw the defendant bite the ear off, and he said he didn’t.  The lawyer didn’t shut up; he then asked why the witness had said that the defendant bit off the ear. “Because I saw him spit it out,” was the reply.  When video shows Ray Rice dragging his unconscious girlfriend from an elevator, you don’t need to see the rest of the video to know what happened. 

Brady probably didn’t personally take a needle and let air out of the balls.  He probably just said something about the balls feeling “big” and winked at the equipment guys.  One last piece of proof that the Patriots were guilty—owner Bob Kraft said he knew the investigation would show no direct evidence that the Patriots did anything  wrong.  How could he know that, unless he knew there were no video cameras in the room where the balls were deflated?