#DFG: Canceling the Noise
- Thread starter nattysez
- Start date
soxhop411 said:
Did he sign the work in exchange for her drawing Goodell with an ass where his face should be? We know that's Tom's m.o.
Is that Goodell second from the left? If so, he looks like he wants to put his head in the oven.
DrewDawg said:
Actually, I think that the higher the expectation the judge upholds Goodell's ruling, the more impactful it will be if he vacates the punishment. So that sort of expectation is good as long as Berman rules in Brady's favor.
I wish I was at home..this would already have a JMOH face on it.soxhop411 said:
Justice for clarity's sake, would you agree that a remand order could acknowledge that Goodell could punish Brady for non-cooperation in line with precedents and law of the shop, but not use it to bootstrap the underlying offense?dcmissle said:
soxhop411 said:
Comedy Gold right there.
I thought it was particularly interesting that Berman is looking at this through the lens of just the AFC Championship game and doesn't appear interested in anything that has happened in the past. I think a good % of Pats fans agree that at some point there may have been ball deflation in some game but not the AFC Champ game.
Not so much splitting the baby, as clipping the baby's toe-nail.
I have a hard time believing the Judge will rubber stamp Goodell's bullshit investigation/appeal process, absent real evidence that Brady did anything wrong (other than maybe destroy his phone) So even if RG's has the right under the CBA to do as he sees fit, IMO rubber stamping the NFL's show trial is not what the Judge wants to do.
Brady gets spanked for non-cooperation so maybe a modest fine.
I have a hard time believing the Judge will rubber stamp Goodell's bullshit investigation/appeal process, absent real evidence that Brady did anything wrong (other than maybe destroy his phone) So even if RG's has the right under the CBA to do as he sees fit, IMO rubber stamping the NFL's show trial is not what the Judge wants to do.
Brady gets spanked for non-cooperation so maybe a modest fine.
I voted for uphold. I think it will be with scathing commentary, noting there's no evidence Brady did anything wrong, and a that there's compelling argument that noting at all happened to the footballs. But I suspect he will tell the NFLPA, "you agreed Roger can do this. Just because he's wrong doesn't mean I can overturn it."
j44thor said:
Based on what exactly? If it didn't happen in this game, and clearly didn't happen against the NYJ when it was absolutely most neeedd, what compelling argument could one make that it ever happened? I think you're off the mark on the bolded assumption.
I said other as I believe the process dictates it be remanded back to the NFL. I think he'll do this with enough qualifiers that the only thing that will happen is a fine maybe slightly more than the 25k or 50k that has been established as precedent but not high enough to incite Brady to continue fighting or draw the ire and wrath of Berman for not following his directive.
Jets fans will still wear deflated footballs on their heads. Many did not pass high school chemistry so they will be given a free pass.
Jets fans will still wear deflated footballs on their heads. Many did not pass high school chemistry so they will be given a free pass.
Hendu for Kutch said:
The texts from JJ to McNally about giving him a big needle and McNally commenting that Brady is going to be getting watermelons and that the only thing sinking will be his passer rating. None of those can be simply explained away.
Just go to the "Did the Pats do anything thread" and there are plenty of people that think something has happened at some point but not the AFC game.
I wonder how the NFL is feeling about its decision to force this in a NY federal court right now?
j44thor said:
Can't that all be explained as pre-inspection inflation or deflation, which is perfectly legal?
j44thor said:
I've avoided that particular thread because it looked like trollbait from the start. I imagine I'm not alone. But the question is, if they were doing it, why not against the NJY? And if you claim it only started after that, why not against IND? The deflator text is from last May. The timeline is a mess, and the only two instances where we have any evidence, it strongly points to nothing happening.
Hoya81 said:
This never made sense to me. If Brady liked the ball deflated so much, why didn't he include that in the request for loosening of ball prep rules? I have a hard time seeing someone approving all the things they now allow with the balls but being outraged at the idea of expanding the air pressure range to 12-14. It's not like he brought that idea up and it was rejected. I have a hard time believing he wouldn't even ask about including something supposedly so important to him.
You haven't been paying close attention to Deflategate threads on this site then. I mean, they haven't been explained *recently* but that's because we've collectively put some arguments behind us.j44thor said:
So McNally would take a pump with him to a bathroom and fill the balls up after ref inspection? It's more likely he was talking about blowing up the balls before inspection as a way to fuck with Tom, who was getting on their case for allowing officials to fill them up to 16 psi.j44thor said:
j44thor said:
I 100% agree that the weather reduced air pressure in the balls in the past and will continue to do so in the future, so with that I agree your statement is true.
soxhop411 said:
"The guy doing the police sketches thought I was messing with him because my dad came out looking like Father Time and my mom came out looking too butch and looking way too much like Richard Ramirez. You know the Night Stalker, remember him?"
E5 Yaz said:
I find this last piece particularly notable because, since day one, all "legal experts" have said this term is a universal legal term that has much more merit in the legal sense than it does in the normal linguistic sense. However, if this tweet is accurate, Judge Berman seems to find this term quite problematic.
You're conflating "more likely than not" with "generally aware." The former is a common evidentiary standard. The latter is NFL speak.Sox and Rocks said:
I agree completely. Just wanted to make sure I didn't err in the other thread.dcmissle said:
Yes, I am. Good catch, and I have conflated both of these from the start since I find both problematic (as a professor of language and non lawyer).BroodsSexton said:
j44thor said:
FYI -- Brady explained during his hearing, under oath, that they changed ball prep procedures before the Jets game and the AFCCG due to the forecast of inclement weather. They typically use some sort of oil on the ball to soften the leather but Brady doesn't like it when the balls get really wet. So he asked JJ to use a different method which involved the breaking in of footballs the old fashioned way. Brady said they would essentially have ball boys throwing the balls back and forth hundreds of times to break them in.
Nobody connected this to McNally's tweets during the arbitration hearing that I saw. Certainly it's possible that...
1. McNally was talking about deflating footballs quickly
2. McNally was talking about wearing in footballs quickly
3. McNally was talking about selling tickets worth a lot of money he didn't want to be on the hook for
Not reasonably to you. Don't assume you speak for the masses. People see what they want to see in those texts. If the Deflategate fiasco never happened, and you gave everyone full access to the JJ / JM's texts, no one could possibly glean the existence of such a conspiracy.j44thor said:
Sox and Rocks said:
Well, I think facially people understand the problem with the term "generally aware" in this context, even if they've thought about it or not. Brady was disciplined for conduct detrimental to the league. Awareness, and worse general awareness, is not any kind of conduct. It's a state of mind. How can you be punished for engaging in detrimental conduct, solely for knowing something?
Generally thought crime is not a crime. Knowing something is not, under any system of law or punishment, grounds for punishment, and it especially cannot be if the thing you're punished for specifically is for "conduct". For the lawyers, there is the mens rea (your state of mind) and your actus reus (the actual criminal act). General awareness only goes to mens rea, not actus reus, and even for the non-lawyers if they can't articulate why that's a problem, they have an intuitive sense that it's unfair.
Now, what Wells probably meant, and what the NFL could have said, is that being aware of something is conduct detrimental when that awareness gives you a duty to do something. Being aware that, on your watch, footballs are being deflated below the legal limit, the NFL could have said, gives rise to a duty to put a stop to it, and by not doing so, you're as guilty as if you'd done it yourself. That is, your crime is not one of commission, but one of omission, and in fact failing to act, when you have a duty to act, can be punished under the law. To go back to lawyer speak, it's sufficient actus reus.
But the NFL has never argued this. I'm not sure why. It seems like the much better way to go. And, even with respect to what a putz Wells was here and how wired this process is, if you could open his brain, or put him on a lie detector, I think this is close to what he actually concluded, right or wrong, whether he articulated it well or not.
The NFL's tactic, instead, was to try to "fix" the problem with "generally aware" by having the Commissioner make findings that Brady actually went beyond general awareness. Will this be a winning strategy? Maybe. It gave Brady a procedural fairness argument it didn't need to give him, and set him up for good argument. Berman's question gives us some hope that he's not buying the argument that Wells' basis for punishment is irrelevant if Goodell fixed it -- he seems to think, at least for sake of argument, that the "general awareness" standard employed by Wells is somehow relevant to the case.
As has been pointed out by several posters, this poll contains options that are not legally speaking real substantive possibilities for the outcome of the case. While I understand the basic gist of what the poll is trying to accomplish, these kinds of "general gist" conversations are among the things that have been obscuring what might really happen and confusing and even misleading people following the case--to say nothing of those poor souls who listen to sports radio. We've done well here to lay out what can actually occur with some precision, and people seem by and large grateful for that. As such, we don't want any discussion that might undermine and lead people astray from that.
I am therefore vacating this poll and thread and remanding the issue back to the board for a possible new thread consistent with this post.
I am therefore vacating this poll and thread and remanding the issue back to the board for a possible new thread consistent with this post.
IIRC, you may be conflating "generally aware" with "more likely than not," (understandable, they were basically next to each other in the Wells Report) which is actually a bit of a legal term d'art. I didn't think many people here or elsewhere gave the same credence to the "generally aware" part of things, but I may be wrong.Sox and Rocks said:
Edit: Ack. Long beaten by BS.