The entire Deflategate mess is a mess. As soon as the NFL lost control of the information flow the process that they engaged in looks at best shoddy, haphazard, idiotic and extemperaneous, and at worst like a stooge’s marathon conspiracy to get the Patriots somehow.
There is one piece of evidence in the entire Wells report that has always been bugging me as a referee.
During the 2014 Patriots versus Jets game, the referees fucked up. They allowed balls that were 16 PSI to be used for the entire game. Brady did not like how they felt and bitched about it to the Patriots equipment guys. One of the Patriots equipment guys texted to his fiancee that he had been chewed out for setting the balls to 16 instead of 13 PSI. The following week, the Patriots presented all of the game balls to the referees set at 12.5 PSI (the lowest legal limit) and gave the refs a print-out of the relevant NFL rules with the range either circled or highlighted.
If there was not a quasi-scandal that has resulted from this, this would be notable to the referees as it is a dick move on a minor piece of trifling bullshit that no one really cares about. If the NFL cared about ball air pressure they would know about the Ideal Gas Law, they would know about shrinkage, they would not let teams control the balls between measurement and play. This was a no one gives a shit rule, and the Patriots decided to show the refs up.
Speaking as a referee, if a team shows me the league rules about a minor trifling equipment specification, I’m going to first look very intently at that team’s own equipment for the same trifling rule violation before I look at the other team. It invites additional attention on a nothingburger. As a referee, the fact that the Patriots gave the refs a highlighted page out of the rule book, knowing that this invites heightened scrutiny on their own balls, is some of the strongest evidence that nothing was happening.
Joel
The lack of tangible competitive advantage is another strong piece of evidence. The NFL losing the thread is hardly anything new. It’s too bad Kraft didn’t go nuclear and leak some classified CTE documents during this whole affair.
DougJ
Deflategate was a false flag operation
dedc79
This is a league that is preparing to move the Raiders back to LA for a second time, with a plan for the Chargers to join them there. Don’t assume intelligence when all the signs suggest there is none.
Davebo
Agreed. But can Brady prevail in federal court? I just don’t see it but then IANAL.
the Conster
Since I spend most of my time in downtown Boston, the best part of this is the t-shirts, my favorite so far being “GOODELL IS A BITCH”. He’d better never show his face in these parts, ever, since it’s been pretty clear for a while that he’s the bitch for the other 31 jealous owners.
redshirt
Here’s what happened: Nothing.
But the NFL was running a sting operation on behalf of the Colts and Ravens, and messed that up.
Then they leaked FALSE information (11 of 12 balls severely deflated) which to this day is accepted by the public as the facts of the case.
Then they ran a farcical “independent” investigation which was nothing of the sort which found there was no major issue with the Patriots balls, cleared the Patriots of wrongdoing, and then levied the biggest team penalties in league history and suspended the greatest QB of all time on suspicions.
It’s ludicrous.
Davebo
Yes, he’s obviously been out to get Kraft from the beginning! (groan)
the Conster
@Davebo:
No, no one said that. redshirt has it exactly right – it was Indy and Baltimore leading the way, and Goodell heard from the other owners as well to lay down the ban hammer. He did – that’s his “job”.
Amir Khalid
In association football, the laws of the game have this to say about the air pressure in the ball:
Why is the air pressure in an American football specified to within 0.5lb/sq in?
lahke
Could we please agree not to use gendered language as pejoratives? I imagine John would also prefer we not call him any kind of dog, too. Think of Lily.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Why does your “football” care so little about its equipment?
JPL
@Davebo: My understanding and please correct me if I am wrong, the Judge is only suppose to rule on the collective bargaining agreement, not deflategate. The judge asked enough questions that he questioned the charges, but I think his ruling is whether or not Goodell can screw the Pat’s if he wants to.
redshirt
@the Conster: Goodell has a summer home in South Portland ME and had to have extra police protection at the estate the last few weeks. Also, some enterprising fan hired a plane with a banner telling Goodell to go home.
Amusingly, Tom Brady also has a summer home in Maine, about 25 miles away from Roger’s. Wonder if they met up and swam it out.
Joel
@JPL: Really just Brady, because the Patriots as an entity are not part of the CBA (except as part of the NFL). The lost draft picks are never coming back.
redshirt
@JPL: As I understand it, your correct. There are questions of procedure involving Ted Wells as an “independent” party and the role of Goodell in setting punishments.
Tree With Water
So, this mess belongs to Brady & the Pats because an equipment manager hi-lited rules in a rule book? That the ref’s hurt fee-fee’s somehow forced Roger Goodell to act? You’ve got to be kidding. Your king shit attitude about refereeing was shared by the MLB’s umpires union 16 years ago, just before they walked off a cliff by tendering mass resignations (and the game today is better off because those resignations were accepted, too). No, this fiasco belongs lock, stock, and barrel to Goodell and the truly venal ownership groups that comprise the NFL. I still think Brady should tell them all to kiss his ass and walk away from the game, at least until Goodell is fired and a public apology issued to the QB for the incompetence of The Big Bad Shield. Still, at least he’s in the process of making them all look silly in a court of law, and that’s not bad a bad resolution, either.
JPL
@redshirt: I thought the NFL in court, admitted he wasn’t independent and didn’t need to be. The independent part was only for ESPN.
Bill
I assume you live in or near Boston.
different-church-lady
@redshirt:
People keep calling it a sting operation. A sting is when you actually have a reason to believe something shady is going on and an operation is when you actually have a plan in place to catch them at it.
In this case they just got an accusation from someone, went off their heads, and piled up a bunch of “suspicious” circumstantial evidence to defend the heads-went-offing. The thing about witch hunts is that they invariably turn up witches, by their very nature.
MomSense
@the Conster:
One of my mom’s friends was dog sitting for RG and a group of their friends (late 70s and 80s) wanted to send him a note saying he wouldn’t get his dog back unless he left their Brady alone.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: Do they play all association football games at sea level?
the Conster
@MomSense:
Good plan!
JPL
@MomSense: lol
different-church-lady
@JPL: In my IANAL understanding, this would have been the case (literally “the case”) if the Player’s Association had simply sued the league. Instead, in what seemed at the time to be a strategic move (and now might turn out to be a strategic blunder), the NFL filed first, asking the court to uphold their decision as fair and correct. Thus, the judge gets to look at everything that lead to the decision.
Mutant Poodle
Technically, the judge is ruling on whether the NFL followed the rules dictated in the CBA between the NFL and the NFLPA. He did ask questions about the strength of the case against Brady – maybe he finds that relevant, maybe not. But he won’t rule on that (unless he decides to, because he’s a Federal Judge and can do so if he wants to.
There’s a good rundown of the legal issues from about three weeks ago here. I am not unbiased (Pats fan from the incompetent days), but the NFLs case is junk, and they are just making stuff up. I hope they get hammered by the Judge, and Goodell gets fired so he has to find a real job, or just spend his days mowing the lawn of his estate in Maine,
NobodySpecial
I just look at the fumbling history since the rule was put into place and the decent evidence that a lot of running backs and wide receivers who were incredibly surehanded to the point of ridiculousness while in New England became incredibly pedestrian as soon as they left the Patriots. Add to that the equipment manager’s texts and it’s pretty clear that this was a thing with New England.
Not to mention, of course, that the Patriots have a prior reputation for stretching the rulebooks. People always have an excuse to minimize that part.
jl
@Amir Khalid:
” Why is the air pressure in an American football specified to within 0.5lb/sq in? ”
American Exceptionalism. And Rule of Law. Iron clad rule of exceptional law, dammit!
from the post:
” at best shoddy, haphazard, idiotic and extemp[o]raneous ”
And the Rule of Law for the NFL is that Goodell does what… whatever…
Edit: I agree that deflategate has fallen apart as a real scandal about an actual thing, which is tough for me because I don’t like the Patriots or Brady. Man it burns me to have to admit that Brady acted, as usual IMHO like a ****, but he is being treated unfairly. Oh… it hurts.
Amir Khalid
@different-church-lady:
Of course not. There’s a reference to a maximum permitted air pressure of 1.1 atmosphere “at sea level” (which the rule translates to an absolute number of 1,100g/sq cm) because atmospheric pressure varies with altitude.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: Do they have a formula and use an altimeter at each game?
Or do they just go, “Yeah, let’s get on with playing this thing” like a sane sport would?
jl
“…a minor piece of trifling bullshit that no one really cares about… This was a no one gives a shit rule…”
John Madden gave a capsule history of NFL approach to the football recently, and he made it clear that the NFL suits view the ball as a marketing device and a profit center. Anything else about it is a nuisance to be put up with. Everything that has transpired wrt NFL role in deflategate is consistent with what Madden said some weeks ago.
Amir Khalid
@different-church-lady:
Richard, as an actual referee, would be the best person to answer this. But I think that if the football is bouncy enough for the referee (I think the old test, no longer part of the official rules, was that it should bounce one foot when dropped onto a concrete surface from six feet up) then it’s good for play.
piratedan
@Mutant Poodle: I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope, after all, they took the Redskins to task for going outside of the unspoken collusion agreements in the uncapped year by spending and crafting contracts that would take advantage of that. The league approved the contracts and then retroactively punished them for not falling in line with the other colluding owners. Which then split the “profits” on the penalties assessed to the franchise with the other owners. Telling was that they nailed the Redskins and the Cowboys for “exceeding” a cap that wasn’t in place, but didn’t punish the Buccanneers for not meeting the floor limits of the same agreement.. Does this mean that Snyder still isn’t an arrogant a-hole, no it doesn’t. This was a pretty clear indication that there is a faction within the league ownership that is an authority unto themselves and they OWN Goodell and he acts as their flak catcher while they impose their will on their own unique entertainment cartel.
scav
@different-church-lady: There’s a part of the sporting world that’s sane? I figured it was the usual flavor of insanity thing as per usual.
Joel
@NobodySpecial: the fumble rate study was wrong. Like, badly, Strategic vision level wrong. Like made up.
http://regressing.deadspin.com/why-those-statistics-about-the-patriots-fumbles-are-mos-1681805710
the Conster
@NobodySpecial:
And this is exactly the jealous bitchiness that is not evidence of anything, that proves it’s a witch hunt by the other sore loser owners.
Peale
Reading how upset this makes people, makes me glad I’m a fan of the only virtuous team in football.
different-church-lady
@Peale: The 1925 Rock Island Independents?
JPL
@the Conster: Well, well, the Patriots know how to read the rule book. Who said that was legal?
lol
David Koch
What we should be investigating is why did Giselle join ISIS.
bupalos
I find deflate-gate denialism pretty hilarious. It’s about as plausible as climate-denialism without the high stakes.
The ball-dude stole the balls, went into the bathroom, and deflated them. It’s pretty much the only explanation of ALL the circumstantial evidence that doesn’t require an fbi suspect board, 1000 yards of red yarn, and creating enmities (Godell and Kraft??!) out of whole cloth. Who knows what Brady did, but what he did not do was be as forthcoming as possible and his “employer” is a prick with ridiculously tight rules that usually screw over other less glossy people but this time happened to light upon him. Yeah, the investigation is a clown show, but it’s pretty much an OJ Simpson deal. You aren’t innocent just because your accusers are a clown show.
Personally I’d put some money on Belichick, since he might be the only one kooky enough to screw with the outer limits of competitive advantage like that. The dude had his assistant coaches in Cleveland once spend an entire summer acquiring and analyzing footage of every single fumble ever recorded in the NFL to classify why fumbles happen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if fingers not digging into the ball surface came up there and he started thinking about how fingers could get better purchase. But whatever, the bottom line is the balls were messed with, Brady decided to make his phone unavailable, and he is taking some of the fall for it, commensurate with a single PED violation.
p.a.
Disclosure: I’ve been a Pats fan since they drafted Jim Plunket and Randy Vataha.
Roger Goodshill is an incompetent $40mil/year hack.
1) Atlanta Falcons admit to pumping noise into a domed stadium for 2 years. Docked 5th round draft pick, $350k.
2) Goodshill’s OWN FUCKING INHOUSE (Wells) INVESTIGATION CLEARLY STATES BELICHICK, CRAFT, PATS ORGANIZATION NOT INVOLVED IN ANY DEFLATION. Docked 1st and 4th round picks, $1mill.
Goodshill has to hang tough against the Pats; the degenerates/liars/drug addicts/lucky sperm larvae he represents will be ok with (potentially) losing in court, but will kick his $40M ass to the curb if he concedes anything to the union.
DeMaurice Smith should be fired: in the last CBA, how the fuck do you agree to let Roger Goodshill be the ‘independent arbitrator’. Holy fuck.
different-church-lady
@bupalos:
So climate change is based on circumstantial evidence? I never knew that before now!
Amir Khalid
@bupalos:
It just seems a lot of bother for an extremely slight tactical advantage.
Grumpy Code Monkey
BALLGHAZI!, please. The other name is tired, cliched, and doesn’t quite capture the level of angst associated with this particular fiasco. Just replace Republicans with Colts fans (or, frankly, any non-Patriots fans) and you pretty much have it.
Apropos of nothing at all, it’s time to revoke the NFL’s anti-trust exemptions.
ETA: From Deadspin:
dedc79
Richard, are you a Pats fan? If so (or if not), it seems worth disclosing, particularly given your claim that you are speaking “as a referee.”
jl
@bupalos:
” You aren’t innocent just because your accusers are a clown show. ”
The Patriots are not innocent, in my opinion, in terms of playing fast with the rule, and being a-holes. But then Brady has no reason to worry about the just proper and fitting, IN MY OPINION, penalty I would levy on Brady, besides the mandated fine, he would have to stand up in front of the crowd before every game and announce through the speaker system, that he is an a-hole, and look like he means it sincerely.
Clown show NFL should not be allowed to impose arbitrary sanctions based on BS. Edit: even against known a-holes.
bupalos
@redshirt:
Boy, they really did mess that up. They suspended Brady for games against… Indy and Baltimore’s division rivals.
Boy Indy and Baltimore really need to think harder about their next jedi mind control trick.
bupalos
@jl: @different-church-lady:
Mmmmm…. yes. Partially. Mostly. It’s pretty similar. You have a model for what you think is happening, and all the observable circumstances fit that model best, whereas only bits and pieces of the evidence can be crammed into other models.
Its pretty similar, and that a lot of otherwise sane people can talk themselves into these corners of denials gives me more hope for humanity, because maybe right wing troglodytes are also operating on one small defect that could be cured, like pats fans are with Bradyism.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
Assuredly not. But the pressures quoted are gauge pressures, i.e. pressure difference between the inside and outside, not absolute pressures. Though frankly, anyone who defines a pressure in g/cm^2 rather than Pa doesn’t deserve the time of day.
jl
@bupalos: My understanding is that suspension is not standard sanction for violation of the rule that was broken. So what is it for? Brady being an ass, busing his phone conveniently timed but supposedly on his standard schedule?
Hey, maybe the suspension could be justified too. But the whole things is based on Goodell sitting on top of the mess doing whatever he feels like, which passes the smell test just as much as anything Patriots or Brady did.
I’m not following it all that closely, so correct me if I have anything wrong.
bupalos
@p.a.:
There is a difference between a finding that an organization was unaware of what its employees were doing and the organization not doing it. The New England Patriots football team deflated footballs. The hierarchy was found to be probably unaware of what was going on. They were punished for allowing it to go on, ie punished for negligence.
bupalos
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I can see why the denialists would want that change, but it really bears no resemblance at all.
Davebo
You gotta love football! Because this really was a trivial matter yet people are sure riled up about it.
That fact is, however, that Tom Brady’s beef should be with the NFLPA. They are the ones who agreed to make Goodell judge and jury on issues like this. He should also be pissed at Kraft for accepting the team’s penalties not fighting at all looks like an admission of guilt.
Davebo
The judge may, rightly IMO, find that the punishment levied was arbitrary and inconsistent with recent handling of similar events.
But again, what can he do other than strongly suggestion that the NFL should reconsider the suspension terms?
JPL
@Davebo: yup
In fairness, I think Kraft thought he could make the situation go away.
Sherparick
I am learning just to hate the NFL. Roger Goodell and the merry band of plutocrats he works are are basically destroying what Rozelle and Tagliabue created the last 50 years. Of course, they also created the culture that produced Goodell out of the bowels fo the NFL corporate office.
p.a.
@bupalos: and compared to Falcon’s penalty?
SFAW
@redshirt:
Well, either your information is wrong, or Goodell’s a moron. South Portland? About the only things in South Portland (or “SoPo” as no one calls it) are the Maine Mall, part of Portland “International” Jetport, and the gas tanks and scrap heap by the water. Yeah, there’s Sable Oaks GC, but the area is not exactly a site of bucolic splendor.
Now if you had written Falmouth Foreside, that would be a different story.
SFAW
@Sherparick:
They tried to get Bud Selig, but he wasn’t enough of a shill.
NobodySpecial
@Joel: Doesn’t negate the valid point that their fumble rates decreased significantly after the rule change, and that there expert ball handling running backs went on to be much less expert moving to other teams.
To wit, BenJarvis Green-Ellis. Similar numbers of touches between his career of four years with the Patriots and two with the Bengals. Zero fumbles in four years with the Patriots, five in two with the Bengals. Did he all of a sudden forget how to handle a football when he got traded? Kevin Faulk has the opposite: He was a virtual butterfinger for years with the Patriots, and then suddenly after 2007 fumbled exactly twice. He didn’t suddenly learn six years into his career how to hold a football.
And, again, you have the equipment guy’s texts and his actions at the game, which have never been disputed. But by all means, keep fucking that chicken.
Bill
@p.a.:
I suggest you look up the term “lack of organizational oversight.”
jpa
Bob Kraft blew this. before accepting one of the biggest team penalties in nfl history all he had to do was insist that no patriot employees receive any sanctions. the precedent for that type of deal is clear: aig, lehman bros, citibank, et al
Davebo
@JPL:
I tend to agree re: Kraft. But he should have held off on that decision till he had a commitment from Goodell, perhaps over a nice dinner party at his home. ;0)
redshirt
@SFAW: I got it wrong. It’s in Scarboro.
Also, it’s pretty clear the NFL is acting “tough” in order to overcome the Ray Rice/Adrian Peterson fiascos from last year. Good job, Shield!
KTF
He has a house in Maine. Wonder when he’ll show his face there next
Bobby Thomson
Fuck that Bush-enabling piece of shit. He’s dead to me.
SFAW
@Bill:
Well, maybe, but it’s not as if the Kraft organization is as on top of things as St. Ronnie. Bob and Jonathan Kraft may not know everything that happens, but I’m willing to bet a beer that Belichick was keyed in, and also the Krafts to some extent.
That being said: I think the whole thing is bullshit. As a Jets fan (oy!), few things would warm my heart more than the Pats having their collective balls busted (so to speak), but this whole melodrama is ridiculous, and Goodell should have just told Irsay and Company to fuck off. It’s not as if Irsay is anything approaching a good guy. (Yes, I know, his being an asshole does not automatically make his complaints bullshit, etc., etc.)
Gavin
Is the NFL even aware of the concept of a gauge R&R study? No self-respecting industrial engineer would certify the NFL’s methodology.
“An element can affect the measurement process accidentally. So, it could be possible that measured values contain unknown elements. Therefore, when it seems that what has been measured is stable, these process measurements are certainly under the effect of unknown factors.” – Shewhart
Here is the paper the NFL should read
SFAW
@redshirt:
Re: Scarborough: that makes a lot more sense. Prouts Neck has some really high-dollar places, and a lot of them are high enough off the water that they won’t be affected much by sea-level rise (unless it’s like 10 meters). If I win Powerball, that’s one of the places I’d look.
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
Is that Goodell? Or someone else?
redshirt
@SFAW: I thought your Jets made a lot of good moves off-season, but then Geno gets knocked out and it seems like the Jets are already cooked for the season.
Bill
@SFAW:
What exactly is it you think is “bullshit?”
The investigation revealed an employee of the Pats deflated balls in violation of league rules. It also revealed that, at the very least, Brady failed to co-operate and more likely than not was complicit in the rule violation. Goodell (who as a general rule is not very good at his job) was within his powers to hand out the punishment he did. I’m not seeing much “bullshit” here.
Is it the severity of the punishment you think is bullshit?
Just One More Canuck
Why does the NFL allow the teams to control the balls in the first place. Surely they make enough money that they could hire some extra officials to make sure that the balls are inflated properly and kept under the officiating crew’s control
Mutant Poodle
@piratedan: The NFL can do a lot more to owners than players. The players have the CBA, and it provides some structure and protection (but look for some of this to get cleaned up next time.
I think it highly possible that the judge roses the suspension based on any number of violations of the CBA and the law of the shop, which would do nothing to the Patriot team penalties except make them look incredibly unfair.
jl
@Bill:
From what I read there are two questions: were the rules for handling balls violated? (looks like yes to me), were the balls actually out of compliance, no matter what was done to them (big disagreement).
” Goodell (who as a general rule is not very good at his job) was within his powers to hand out the punishment he did. ”
The big fight is over the suspension. My understanding that is not part of stated penalty for violation of rules for ball inflation. Goodell is judge and jury and appeals court, which is the great system he said he was gong to use for rule of law in the NFL. Apparently the players union went along with this? I did not know that.
Anyway, I think more room for BS than you admit.
SFAW
@redshirt:
Losing Sheldon Richardson would be somewhat more significant than losing Geno. Geno should some flashes of being a decent leader in his rookie season, but he has not improved, only backslid. The Jets picked up the wrong Smith that year, in my opinion, but I’m certainly not an expert. Not clear that Geno has any “upside potential” remaining.
Irony Abounds
The Patriots are cheating douche bags from the top guy Kraft to the lowliest ball boy. And the fact that I have hated the Patriots from December 28, 1963 on does not influence my opinion in the least.
SFAW
@Bill:
Severity is certainly part of it. That the deflation apparently had no effect on the outcome is another. That “Brady failed to co-operate and more likely than not was complicit in the rule violation” is not exactly a “Guilty as sin, Your Honor” statement is yet another.
Had Indy lost by a field goal or two, after the Pats had run up the score in the first half, I would probably be closer to the “string ’em up” crowd. But the “properly-inflated” score was 28-0, so I’m having a slightly tougher time accepting that it made that much difference
Look, as Irony Abounds said, they cheat. Whether that means they’re the only ones who do, or just the only ones who are incompetent enough to get caught, I don’t know. But the “integrity of the game” bullshit that the League Office is so big on is a crock. The last person who ACTUALLY gave a shit about the integrity of the game was Bart Giamatti. Goodell, not so much.
SFAW
@Irony Abounds:
Yeah, I miss Cookie, too.
zzyzx
@Just One More Canuck: Because Tom Brady and Peyton Manning appealed for the rule to change to allow that.
redshirt
@Bill:
It revealed no such thing. Guess how many balls ended up being slightly underflated when they finally got around to measuring them at halftime? 3. Same as the Colts, strangely enough!
And the so called incriminating texts were from months prior to the AFC Championship game and are a direct response to a Jets game where the refs blew up the balls to 16PSI.
So what was proven, again?
SFAW
@redshirt:
That the Patriots are the cheating-est cheating cheaters who cheat in the most cheating-est way possible?
ETA: Evah.
Eric U.
with this much money involved, only the really stupid teams don’t cheat. It’s not hard to find list of cheating teams, it’s atrocious. But with any big-time sport, there is massive cheating and obscene amounts of money spent cheating. The drugs the NFL players take is a lot worse than a few PSI of air, and nobody is saying a damn thing about that.
redshirt
@SFAW: Cheatriots.
smintheus
I find it hard to believe nobody cares about the inflation level. Never played football, but I hated playing with over or under inflated soccer balls. It screws up anything even slightly fancy you try to do with a shot or pass.
smintheus
@SFAW:
More like Bart Starr.
SFAW
@smintheus:
Or Paul Hornung.
But, unless I suffered a brain wipe, Giamatti came after Starr.
the Conster
@redshirt:
LOL. They hate us cuz they ain’t us.
the Conster
@Eric U.:
Exactly. Tom Brady doesn’t hit women, do drugs, beat his kids, DWI, shoot himself or anyone else, so he must be punished for being GOAT because jealousy.
bupalos
@p.a.: falcons should have gotten hammered harder I thought. The only thing there is that crowd noise is a variable factor in different venues, and they may really have been just trying to address a “game experience” issue to cover for their blase fans rather than affect play. You’d have to look at decibel levels produced and whether it really created any advantage. I think ?#$@ing with the football is a much clearer attempt to affect actual play.
SFAW
@efgoldman:
I didn’t specify football, although my writing could have been less ambiguous. I haven’t had a lot of use for the commissioners (or equiv) in any of the major sports since Bart died. Selig was a tool, Goodell no better (more’s the shame, considering his lineage), I don’t have much use for Bettmann.
Maybe that Blatter guy could clean things up …
ETA: And I think Giamatti banned Rose, not suspended.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@SFAW:
You may not, but plenty of people do: yes, others cheat. Last season, the Vikings were found to be illegally manipulating the balls, in their case by putting them under a heater. They were punished by a $25,000 fine, the punishment stipulated in the rules for illegally manipulating footballs.
Every bit of punishment the league came up with beyond the $25,000 fine was them making shit up and ignoring their own rulebook.
SFAW
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I’m shocked, SHOCKED!
smintheus
@SFAW: I just think it’s funny to use ‘Giamatti’ and ‘integrity’ in the same sentence. He fought tooth and nail as President of Yale to resist demands the university disinvest in apartheid South Africa. He also p*ssed all over university staff when they tried to gain a decent pay increase after years of stagnant wages.
SFAW
@smintheus:
Yes, and Ronald Reagan wasn’t a terrible actor. So?
JimV
As I read the Well’s report, they hired an engineering/testing firm to do the engineering analysis, and that firm didn’t just do gas-law calculations, they did test simulations of all the reasonable permutations of gauges, temperatures, and times (for cooling and warming). The engineering firm calculated, based on those tests, that there was about an 85% chance that the Patriot’s footballs had been deflated after they had been checked by the referee at the start of the game. Add to that the the “deflater” text messages, and Mr. Brady acting like a nervous, guilty teenager when asked if he was a cheater in his first press conference after the AFC Championship, and I personally feel he fails the “preponderance of the evidence” standard.
I read the deadspin fumble analysis linked to above. It was interesting and well-done,but it does not clear the Patriots. It reduces the odds of their record 187 plays/fumble from something like 16K to1 down to 297 to 1, and their running-back fumble performance from best in the league over a long period to third best of 32 teams, which for a team which plays in a lot of cold weather is still somewhat suspicious.
My guess is that Mr. Brady got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, on a minor issue, and was afraid he might be suspended for the Super Bowl if he admitted it.
As for the very-sharp and much-appreciated (sincerely) Mr. Mayhew’s posted point, it does not for me outweigh the other evidence. As far as I can see after reading three online news reports on the issue, we have only the word of Mr. Brady and Patriot employees that it happened as they described it – specifically the part about showing the inflation rules to game officials.
Supposing they did in fact make a point of showing the game officials the pressure rules, a reason could be that it is much easier to deflate from 12.5 or 13.5 psig to 11.5 psig than from 16 psig to 11.5 psig.
I could be wrong and the league could be wrong, but I don’t think their conclusion was unreasonable.
Wazoomann
@JimV: Good reasoned analysis but I’d add a couple of things that easily sway the argument to Ideal Gas Law: Which gauge was used? If you assume “Dr” Walt Anderson used the gauge he told the NFL he used, all of this is moot. Given that likelihood and the text messages about the Patriots showing the refs the rule book (how would they know that this would come up a year later???) it’s pretty evident that this is much ado about nothing other than Roger appeasing a bunch of spoiled billionaire owners who are mad that they haven’t had a turn in winning a super bowl. I mean, shouldn’t the SB be like a participation medal in kindergarten? Here Johnny, it’s your turn with the Superbowl. You did a nice job on your school project (ash tray made out of soap).
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Because there’s a lot more catching in American football & air pressure of ball can affect how hard or easy it is to catch.
Paul in KY
@NobodySpecial: Good point!
Paul in KY
@bupalos: Hear, hear!
Nied
One thing I’ve noticed lately is a sort of wall of ignorance style with people still arguing something Brady did this. Someone will bring up a piece of debunked info (the debunked fumble rate, 2 PSI under, why weren’t the Colts’ balls deflated, I even see people bring up the long retracted story about taping the Rams’ practice). and then just switch to another piece of debunked info after their error is pointed out, and just switch back to the first one after that one is pointed out.
The big key for me is that if you read the Wells report they go through all sorts of screwy hoop jumping to make the Pats’ balls under where they should be given the weather conditions. It goes like this: The Ref had two gauges, one with a big NFL logo that the ref said he used and another that read about half a PSI under the first. At half time they measured the balls with both gauges and the gauge with the NFL logo showed the Pats’ balls right within the range they should have been given the weather conditions outside while the other gauge, surprise surprise, showed them about a quarter PSI under. So the report goes through a bunch of backflips to justify why the ref’s memory was bad and he really used the other gauge, keep in mind that in all other cases they use his memory as an absolute authority (especially on measurements of both teams balls before the game since no one wrote it down). The kicker is if you use the gauge Wells said was used the Colts’ balls were under inflated too! They weasel around this by suddenly fliping the standards saying that they showed proper inflation on at least one of the gauges for the Colts’ balls. It’s a ridiculous double standard and it basically leaves the NFL with no case.
Keep in mind that Wells originally brought on the Physics Department at Columbia to do the scientific analysis portion of the report but fired them when their results showed no wrongdoing and switched over to a private company who’s best hits include an analysis for Phillip Morris that second hand smoke is harmless, and a report that said dumping toxic waste into the Amazon wouldn’t cause any environmental damage.
Paul in KY
@Just One More Canuck: Looks like game balls should be taken away from the team’s control (on game day).
Paul in KY
@Irony Abounds: I’ve hated them since the snowblower game (grrrr).
Vanya
@bupalos: You are like one of those people convinced the Moon Landing is a hoax. There is no “circumstantial evidence” for an event that didn’t happen. People who believe Goodell on Deflategate are basically current or future Trump voters – guided only by emotion.
Vanya
@Nied: Exactly. The “Pats are guilty” proponents are like every conspiracy theorist – ignoring the Occam’s razor solutions, focusing on isolated evidence out of context, repeating demonstrably false claims as fact, etc. It kind of makes you despair for the human race.
bupalos
@Nied:
What you may be seeing here is the result of the Patriots side taking a piecemeal approach to their defense, combined with misunderstanding the evidentiary burden in a case like this. Let me put it this way: The fact that the ball guy disappeared into the bathroom with the balls against protocol combined with the text messages and phone calls is enough by itself, without any other evidence, for a finding of a probable attempt to circumvent the rules and general awareness of this attempt by Brady. This would be true even if the attempted deflation failed or left the balls within the legal limit. Evidence that is logically unassailable has been heaped on top of that (the likely psi levels), but finding the potential holes and legalistic shortcomings in that extra evidence to the extent you can (and yeah, the NFL did a bad job with this stuff, probably partly with recogntion of this general dynamic) really doesn’t change the basic underlying facts. Members of the Patriots staff almost certainly attempted to alter balls outside the purview of the refs and to cover that up, it’s highly unlikely these members acted on their own, as they cited Tom Brady’s concern for the issue as the motive. And Tom Brady was not as cooperative in the investigation as he had every chance to be, including but not limited to the odd claim and timing of the supposedly destroyed phone.
The denialists seem to me to be looking for little victories out at the margins, like a speeder who thinks a ticket is invalid because the cop wrote down the wrong color car. Could this all be a set up by “jealous” owners who have convinced the commissioner to tarnish his best bud Kraft and the league’s most marketable QB because of their irrational hatred of the Patriots greatness? Sure. Just like every time a PED test comes up positive, that player could have been the victim of some frame up. It’s not close to the most likely thing though. The odds are very strong when you’ve got a guy disappearing into a bathroom with footballs he was not supposed to have that calls himself the deflator and wants memorabilia in exchange for whatever he’s doing with them, that he’s attempting to circumvent the protocol and rules.
Nied
See this is what I’m talking about, the text messages were debunked (the Deflator comment was made in mid May last year just about as far from any football being played as possible, all the other messages were the equipment guys grousing about refs over inflating footballs), Wells himself described Brady as completely cooperative in his own report, and most importantly the PSI levels of the footballs are right where they should be given the weather conditions! This isn’t a piecemeal approach, each piece has been debunked and it doesn’t suddenly become undebunked when it combines with other debunked information.
There’s a much simpler explanation: Goodell didn’t realize that the inflation levels of the footballs could change due to weather and proceeded from that and hasn’t changed his mind when presented with evidence to the contrary (again they fired the first group they brought on to do scientific analysis when their results didn’t show the Pats to be guilty). On top of that this has been a great opportunity for Goodell to be Mr. Enforcer of the Law™ after his big high profile failures with Rice and Peterson. Remember Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
bupalos
@Vanya:
Aha. So now nothing happened at all. This is getting good. You’re going to have to lay out that occam’s razor theory for me that fits a guy calling himself the deflator disappearing into the bathroom with the game balls, a guy Tom Brady worries has a lot stress about “getting them done,” who wants brady memorabilia in return for whatever he’s doing.
I’ll try. He needs to “deflate” his bladder and needs memorabilia to compensate for the stress of trying to do that with 24 footballs slung innocently over his shoulder? But why that bathroom instead of the one with the refs around? Ah! maybe he chose that bathroom because it’s a less stressful bathroom to pee in, it’s probably light blue like his nursery whn he was little…and the counterweight of a big bag of footballs maybe helps him maintain balance, maybe he has a problem that when he pees he tends to pitch forward. From stress. The “needle” stuff just refers to the “needling” he gets for having this embarrassing problem with high-stress, off-balance peeing in the vicinity of referees.
I see what you’re saying. It just gets simpler and simpler!!
Nied
@bupalos: Here’s a big problem with your account that you keep ignoring: the balls themselves weren’t deflated. It’s like you’re accusing someone of murder while the supposed murder victim is telling you there alive and saying “it doesn’t matter because I have tons of weak evidence that says you’re dead.”
bupalos
@Nied:
And this i what I’m talking about: you say the text messages (as a whole?) were all “debunked.” What does that mean? I’m open to these explanations, but I’d like clarity. Are you saying any talk about deflating and needles and stress getting them done has all been debunked as MOST LIKELY referring to footballs at all, and it’s all just a coincidental misunderstanding of some kind? Is a guy calling himself the “deflator” debunked because he called himself that in May? Just trying to get a handle on what “debunked” means. Because it really seems to me it means if anything is potentially off about it at all, or there is any other potential explanation we can come up with regardless of it not being the most likely thing, then that counts as “debunked” and all babies and all bathwater go out with it.
Let’s just start at step one. A guy who called himself “the deflator” definitely took the balls to the bathroom with him, skipping a bathroom that would have been more convenient but was within the sight of the refs. Yes? He further “misremembered” whether he had ever gone to that bathroom with a giant bag of footballs, initially claiming he had gone straight to the field. Yes? And the Patriots 11 footballs measured at halftime showed a significantly greater decline in pressure than the 4 Colts footballs, using the assumption that 13 was the general initial pressure for the Colts and 12.5 was the general initial pressure for the Patriots. In 8 combinations of gauges and balls the colts balls dropped an average of .47 psi and in 22 combinations the pats dropped an average of 1.2 psi. It’s very likely that if the rough-and-ready testing methodology used before the game and at halftime were much better controlled, this difference would either drop or go up. It’s VERY highly unlikely that this drop differential would be due to a particular combination of balls and gauges just falling out all wrong for the pats, and just as likely that if the testing methodology were tightened up it would show a greater differential rather than a lesser one as Pats apologists seem to take as axiomatic.
Correct whatever is wrong here.
bupalos
@Nied:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think AT BEST the way that should read is “you can construct a (very unlikely) scenario whereby the combination of balls and gauges used happened to fall out so badly for the Pats that it created the perception that balls had been deflated whereas they weren’t.”
In your analogy, it’s more like we saw the guy drop from the bridge but were never able to recover a body we can prove with scientific certainty is his, so he might very well not be dead.” And you’re right. It’s a logically possible that the balls were ok and the measurements were bad and the pats were just very very very unlucky with that and with all the circumstances surrounding it. The bad luck that their ball guy absconded with the balls to a bathroom and misremembered that and brady can’t remember what phone calls to people he doesn’t know were about, etc. etc. But it’s very very far from the most likely thing, and that’s what the standard of evidence is here.
Nied
Ah now we’re getting somewhere. So the pats balls dropped an average of 1.2 PSI or in other words smack in the middle of where they should be according to the ideal gas law which again kinda kills the whole “the Patriots deflated balls” charge. The only thing left to explain is the discrepancy in the Colts’ balls which could be explained by any number of factors that Exponent failed to examine from differences in use to the Colts’ ballboys occasionally hanging out by a heater (funnily enough Exponent tries to discount that last one by taking the refs’ memory as gospel again when he said he did not recall seeing them by the heaters, but then it’s implausible he’d be cognizant of their whereabouts for anything more than an extremely small part of the game). Exponent takes a few half hearted stabs at alternate explanations but never any combo of factors (which honestly seems the most likely explanation). In any event the Colts’ balls are a side issue given that you yourself are admitting that the Pats’ balls are where they should be given environmental conditions. The only way to make them not is the afore mentioned triple backflip used in the Wells report that would also incidentally indict the Colts for deflation as well. Even then we’re left with the idea that Brady engaged in a long running nefarious scheme to… let a small fraction of a PSI out of some footballs. If nothing else the risk v reward calculation there is implausibly out of wack.
Bill
@redshirt:
From the Wells report (Available here: http://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/photo/2015/05/06/0ap3000000491381.pdf):
For those claiming the Well’s report has been “debunked” I’d love to see sources cited. If it’s from the Pats’ post investigation attempt to save face, then really your talking about “too little too late.” The time to raise those arguments was during the investigation, which as near as I can tell Brady and the Pats didn’t take very seriously. But telling the judge – as you’re being carted off to jail – “wait I had really good defenses I didn’t raise,” isn’t very helpful.
ohmyridiculous
Get a life. This issue boils down to (mostly) a bunch of whiny millionaires squabbling over the rules of their game. Boo hoo, poor Tom Brady and Robert Kraft and every other sad sack, self-absorbed, overpaid athlete (they’re all overpaid and we’re fools to eat up the bread and circus they feed us). It’s a GAME, that’s probably crooked on different levels, and there’s simply no purpose for a reasonable person to invest so much personally. Honestly, what kind of society places this much emphasis on professional sports? A sad, dying one. No one’s life is going to be affected whether Tom Brady plays or not. He plays football–for entertainment. Here’s to tearing down the cult of celebrity in this country and getting back to putting everyday folks first.
Nied
@Bill: Actually they did raise most of those objections during the investigation. In most cases Wells ignored them and excluded them from his report. The only way we’re hearing about them now is because the documents from the appeals hearing (in which the Pats’ original objections were re-introduced) were unsealed by the court. (Fun aside here: The NFL leaked that Brady and the NFL Players Association wanted the appeals proceedings sealed not long after Goodell’s ruling in the appeal while the newly unsealed documents reveal that Brady’s lawyers were arguing strenuously for the opposite.) Besides that the conclusions of the Wells report are internally inconsistent (again if you follow their logic the Colts also illegally tampered with their balls).
Nied
Another inconsistency I couldn’t get in before the edit deadline: Wells uses the now infamous May “deflator’ text as evidence that it was a long running scheme, then turns around and later makes the claim that the October 16th game against the Jets (in which the Referees overinflated the game balls to 16 PSI) was the genesis of the deflation scheme.
bupalos
@Nied:
See you’re making a huge assumption there, which is that you know how much the game balls should have declined by and that it’s actually the Colts balls that are suspicious. You don’t know how much they “should” decline by, because you don’t know the starting temp or the temp they were measured at or the very complex mix of environmental conditions present, how long they were in people’s hands, etc etc. All we know is that the balls didn’t stay within the same inflation parameters, one set lost very significantly more than the other. Given the rest of the circumstantial evidence (a guy swiping the balls and ducking into a bathroom, the same guy who is having stress “getting them done” for Tom, the same guy who is getting a needle, the same guy who “forgot” he went in that bathroom until they “reminded” him with video, the same guy looking to get signed merchandise for something extra he is doing, Brady being upset about overinflated balls…. This preponderance of circumstantial evidence clearly points to the most probable thing, and it’s not that the Colts did something weird that made their balls significantly warmer when they were measured at half time.
I mean, come on. It’s fine if you want to say the NFL’s standards for evidence before levying punishment is too low, and that something should be more than the most probable thing. It’s something else entirely to act like these questions and grey areas prove Brady did nothing and that it’s the Colt’s that have the explaining to do. It’s beyond far fetched.
bupalos
@Nied:
Really? The Wells report states when the genesis of the actual deflation scheme was? Can you quote that?
Bill
@Nied: Actually they did raise most of those objections during the investigation.
Bill
@bupalos:
This.
Nied
@bupalos: I’m acting that way because I’m using the Wells report’s own table on expected pressure losses (p199 table 10 for those following along at home) which shows the expected pressure loss due to temperature for a 12.5 PSI football to be anywhere between .88 to 1.37 PSI (depending on the starting temperature, the table is in 5 degree increments so I pulled from 65-75 degrees as a semi reasonable room temperature range). And Exponent did look the effects of how the balls were handled during the game (focusing only on how the Pats’ balls were handled for obvious reasons) and found that the handling of the ball caused them to lose a few fractions of a PSI not gain them. As to why the Colts’ balls were over what was expected, I don’t know and I don’t care, I’m inclined to believe that only 4 Colts balls just doesn’t give us enough data to draw conclusions from. I certainly don’t think they were adding air at some point after the ref’s inspection, that would be as ridiculous as a quarterback committing bribery and perjury over a scheme to let .2 PSI out of a football.
bupalos
@Nied: What I’m saying is you’re acting like you KNOW that the balls were measured at 65-75 and whatever the low number you are using, 45?. That’s not reasonable. The reality is the balls were very likely treated the same (outside a visit to a certain bathroom) and measured at the same temperatures, which almost certainly wasn’t the lowest outside temperature for the game, but somewhere about between there and the indoor temperature where they were measured at halftime. And low and behold, the colts balls fall right there. You really think the most likely thing here is that the colts balls gained air or temperature or just happened by the luck of the draw to each be weird outliers? That’s wrong in a definitional way. “The most likely thing is it’s all explained by a highly unlikely random variation in 4 particular footballs.” Meanwhile you’ve got Brady forgetting conversations and smashing phones, equipment guys ducking into bathrooms and…misremembering… that fact, paraphernalia being promised as payment for some unspecified stressful service, jokes about going to ESPN with the story….
You guys have to get real. It’s possible your guys did no wrong here, but it’s very unlikely. Just be grateful the NFL is such a clown show they left all these grey areas that you can do this “sun spot” analysis on and feel better about.
Nied
@bupalos: I’m starting to see what the issue is here, when you say you “read the report” you’re talking about the nice part with the out of context text messages and the “bribes” of commonly handed out gifts to stadium staff (which would indict the whole of the NFL if we were applying that standard to any other team). You didn’t bother to read the underlying scientific analysis where Exponent (the science for hire firm I mentioned earlier) tries to lay out a scientific case that the balls were tampered with. They lay out the expected level of deflation from various starting points down to the temperature at Foxboro that night. They lay out the speed at which a ball is expected to warm up and how that would change the pressure over time, they even measured the indoor temperatures in the rooms where they measured the balls. So just using their data you can figure out that information. And using that data the only way they could get to a conclusion of “these balls were tampered with” was if they threw out the ref’s testimony about what gauge he used and substitute a lower reading gauge, then the Pats come out a fraction of a PSI under allowable pressure, and that’s before you get in to them criticisms of their modelling and statistical conclusions. Why are the Colts’ balls higher than the Pats’? Like I said there isn’t enough data to draw a conclusion either in actual pressure measurements or what was being done with them during the first half. Rereading Exponent’s report they are still within expected levels of deflation though as you said lower than the Pats (they were also measured 6-10 minutes after the Pats, also in the report) I can think of any number of completely plausible reasons they might be a little over (like I said they could have spent some time near a warmer, they could have measured them later than the refs thought), at the end of the day it’s still a side issue and a minor one at that.
different-church-lady
@bupalos: It’s a good thing this is just football, because “I dunno, he’s just acting all suspicious” would be a terrible way to run justice in the real world.
bupalos
@Nied:
Appreciate the quote but maybe this refers to someone else’s conversation? I never said I “read the report” and I’m really just going off your summary and the chart of measurements. As I HAVE said, there are plenty of ways to criticize the “science” of the measurements. Way too much was uncontrolled, unmeasured, and unknown, the biggest of these being the internal air temperature of the footballs, none of which ever would have been as low as the outside air temp and none of which ever would have been as high as the inside air temperature at halftime. The best way to criticize the differential that was observed is to assume a larger difference in internal temperature of the balls at halftime due to colts balls being tested later. I don’t think this is particularly reasonable, because by my own common sense the r factor of leather combined with the low delta T you’d be approaching by the time you had them all back in the room would mean time differences in actual measurement would be a much smaller factor. But you certainly have that to impugn the “science” of the test. But as I have also said, I don’t think it would matter all THAT much if there was a finding that we really don’t have a strong enough idea of how much, if any, under the original legal pressure the Pats got the footballs. The act of removing them from the refs control, taking them into a separate locked room and lying about or “misremembering” that fact, combined with the communications between the equipment guys is enough to warrant an institutional penalty for intentional breach of the protocol (1st rounder is harsh, but the Pats do have a history) and at least the impression of competitive advantage that required investigation. And then you have Brady’s phone calls he can’t remember, won’t provide, and destroyed.
Nied
@bupalos: Look I’m actually not impugning the science in the Wells report because it looks pretty sound, they covered pretty thoroughly how much and how fast temperature and other factors would effect a football through experimentation and their results don’t match up with your intuition. What I am impugning is the conclusions they try to reach, because they have to twist themselves into logical pretzels about starting temperatures and which gauge was used to conclude that there was any tampering done to the balls at all. Most damningly even if you decide to follow that logic the level of deflation involved is so miniscule as to be laughably unworthy of the effort. And that’s the crux of the whole issue: if there’s no deflation occurring, then everything else you listed falls apart. All the text messages and pee breaks and red herrings about broken phones (Brady did provide his text message records from his phone company BTW) amount to innocent coincidences. All you’re left with an extremely minor violation of equipment custody worthy of at most a written warning.
Nied
Oh and I forgot to post this yesterday, a nice theory on what Goodell is hoping to accomplish with Ballghazi. Personally think it’s giving him a little too much credit, Goodell does not and has never struck me as very bright but I think it generally gets the contours right. This is about Goodell getting to call himself the Ginger Hammer again after looking like a dishonest idiot in the Rice, Peterson, and concussion issues last year.
bupalos
@Nied:
I think it’s completely fair if what you want to do is say there really is no way you can tell with enough certainty whether these balls actually were under-inflated or not. You’d be arguing with the NFL’s version of “enough” and I could certainly hear that argument because the NFL is consistently ridiculous with what it is willing to base findings on and didn’t cover it’s bases here. Another good example of that would be the Browns receiver that was suspended for being over the MJ threshold by less than the margin of error of the test. And he got what is by comparison a death penalty sentence.
You go too far in two other directions though. You want the potential scientific inconclusiveness of the measurements to be extended to some kind of blanket exoneration. Since we can’t tell certainly enough what the exact loss differential was at half-time, it now doesn’t matter that the deflator swiped the balls, locked himself in the bathroom, and lied about it. It doesn’t matter that Brady can’t remember the subject matter that he talked with the equipment guy about the day after it broke. It doesn’t matter that his phone got smashed, etc etc… It does. They broke protocol, by circumstantial appearance at least they did it with purpose and intent to deceive, and more than one person appears to have hindered the investigation by lying, misremembering, or failing to produce requested information.
A good analogy would be a suspected data breach at a company, where you didn’t have 100% certainty what had been compromised, but you could tell that actions of employees had compromised security. Then those employees lie or misremember things they should be able to remember, and some other employees that you suspect would be the prime beneficiaries of the breach won’t quite fully cooperate. have some odd coincidences with potential sources of evidence disappearing, and also can’t remember some things that should be very memorable. Of course that company could take employment action against those employees. No one would question it.
Nied
@bupalos: We may be talking past each other here a little. I imagine in part because the Wells report goes to great lengths to obfuscate this information (again the actual scientific report is buried 200 pages in). The scientific analysis they did determined with a fairly high degree of accuracy:
1). How much pressure a ball will lose when moved from an indoor environment to an outdoor environment with conditions closely modeled to the ones at Foxboro that night including temperature and relative humidity, and a simulation of the type of handling the Patriots balls received during a game.
2). How fast it would take to reach those pressures once taken outdoors and conversely how long it would take to go back once taken back indoors.
3). They also took testimony on what the thermostats were set to that night and even took temperature measurements of the rooms in question to get an idea of the how much the HVAC system would let the temperature vary (more on this in a bit).
Based on this they determined that the Patriots balls should be have lost somewhere on the order of .88 to 1.37 PSI of pressure when measured at half time. Now since the average level of deflation measured was easily within that range they then go one step further. As I mentioned earlier the Ref that measured the balls had two different gauges one with an NFL logo that he claims he used one without that would register about .4 PSI lower when measuring the same ball. Wells goes to great lengths to try and prove that the referee’s memory was faulty and he actually used the non-logo gauge. Then use that as a the basis to use only that gauge’s measurements at half time, at which point you get an average deflation of 1.4 PSI which is only a hair over the max expected, so they go one step further and assume the balls were measured at 67 degrees (on the low end of the temperature range they measured in the locker room). It’s only after this stretch that they get a result that’s consistent with tampering with the balls. Basically we’re supposed to believe that Brady et all went through all this trouble including perjury, bribery, and spoliation of evidence to get footballs about 1/5 of a PSI lower than regulation, does that sound like a rational accusation to you?
Keep in mind that’s all using the Wells Report’s own numbers and science (which as you point out are pretty dodgy). No wonder they dumped it in the back where they thought no one would read it.
bupalos
@Nied:
I really wasn’t aware that the wells report found that the balls should have deflated exactly as much as the pats balls and significantly more than the colt’s balls, and that the real mystery is how those colts balls got inflated more. That is the crux of what you’re saying here.
But to me there wouldn’t be much mystery there even if the report did read itself the way you are. It would be because there are really big variables that everyone is just guessing on. How wet the balls were, how much they were in people’s hands and when, etc etc. Wells may have done a really crappy job of explaining how much is unknown because they did indeed want to make their conclusions seem more concrete than they could possibly be, which to me is exactly the opposite of what they should have done. They’ve raised all these suppositional intricacies that are nothing but meat and potatoes for the denialists, when they should have just stuck with the basics that the measurements show the Pats balls lost more pressure than the Colts balls, that those measurements could possibly be 1 in 100 flukes but very probably reflect reality, and that given all the other circumstantial evidence and breach of protocol, the most likely explanation for that (not the only one, not the most “scientific” one) is that these people sneaking off with balls into the bathroom and talking about deflating things and Tom being worried about their stress levels of “getting them done,” and getting memorabilia and misremembering things and making odd phone calls they can’t remember the subject of and destroying cell phones…that these people more likely than not deliberately caused that differential to come about.
Can you quantify the odds that those Colt’s ball measurements are just random variation? I think you’re pinning a lot on that not being any kind of problem for you, and I just wonder what numbers you’d stick on that?
The “the must not have done it because it wasn’t a good idea” couldn’t be weaker. I mean, people rob banks even though it has one of the worst crime ROI’s you can find, no one tries to defend them by saying “why would my client rob a bank? That would be really stupid.” It’s clear Brady more or less freaked out about ball pressure at least once. Even if this scheme wasn’t really targeted so much at significantly deflating the balls outside of legal limits as it was making double triple sure they weren’t over the minimum (ie. that the refs didn’t “fuck” them again) the act of removing them from the refs purview to do that and covering that up is culpable and well within something an employer can discipline.
Nied
@bupalos: So I know I’m coming back to this late but weekend. I still don’t think you’re understanding here, it’s Wells (or rather than science firm he hired after the first one told him what he didn’t want to hear) who has to jump through illogical hoops to try and arrive at something other than a natural explanation for the ball’s being below 12.5. So suddenly the refs used a different gauge than they testified to having used, and they must have measured when the room was at the absolute coldest the HVAC system would allow, and when they tested at half time they couldn’t have tested the Colts balls later than half way through half time because
that would have explained the difference between the Pats’ and Colts’ ballsthey decided that must have been the order of events. Again this is all in the report itself but it’s buried so far in the back where they hoped no one would bother to read it.But hey it must be true because text messages (that don’t mention any effort to evade the rules) and pee breaks and Tom Brady was really mad one time about balls being overinflated by 2.5 PSI so of course that explains wanting balls .1-.2 PSI under the limit!
bupalos
@Nied:
This is kind of wearying because you really refuse to go step by step and I really don’t even know what it is you’re claiming. It looks to me like you’re saying absolutely nothing happened. That the guy took the balls to the bathroom just because, the texts were just misunderstood, Brady really can’t remember the subject of the phone calls, and all the footballs were exactly where they should have been and the whole thing is a conspiracy by the league to create a distraction from …. something. and now they want to punish Brady because they are embarrassed by how bad a job they did trying to frame him in the first place. Is that pretty much your position? If not, how about clearly stating what it is. Maybe we agree and don’t even know it.
Can I just ask questions and you answer them? Who is the first science firm and where are their findings that Wells didn’t like? I’d like to see these.
Given that every measurement of both footballs has almost the exact same rate of variation between the two gauges (29 of 30 measurements) isn’t it really pretty rational to assume that the 30th, that has the exact same variation but reversed, is actually due to a recording error and not an exactly inverted 1-in-30 fluke? Isn’t that by far the less likely thing?
Finally, what is the evidence that is being used of the time frame the colts balls were measured (both by Wells and by you) and the assumptions of the science you’re citing that says if your preferred time frame is used that the colts balls would have shown no differential?
As near as I can tell, denialists just do a much worse job of the very thing they accuse wells of doing, taking all the absolute best case scenarios for their case, lumping them together, getting pretty close (like within .2psi) to a finding of no effect AND THEN use that tilted field to claim that all the other circumstantial evidence and misremembering must not mean anything either.