Remember how, when Ballghazi first broke, the NFL emphasized the sacrosanct routine and rigorous, almost military-style preparation of its game balls? How each team has a specialist whose job it is to get those balls exactly to their quarterback's liking while staying within the rules? That the Patriots could have gained some immeasurable, championship edge from a few extra tenths of PSI?
Bullshit! All of it! No one knows anything about the balls. No one's keeping track of them. Random doofuses are roaming the sidelines, pocketing game balls and swapping in random ones they found in a closet somewhere. Non-approved balls are showing up on the field in a conference championship game, and no one knows why or how or where the real ones went. How often does this happen? We wouldn't even have known about this one if the NFL hadn't been investigating
the other ball-related maybe-shenanigans.
This happens
every time. Every NFL controversy—think Ray Rice, or the replacement refs, or the Saints' bounty scandal—starts off with a chest-thumping, self-important "We must protect the shield!" routine and a sworn oath to make things right. And then it quickly devolves into another shining display of the NFL's incompetence, with the answer invariably being that someone who was supposed to know what they were doing didn't.
And now this league, which portrays itself as a Park Avenue office building full of control freaks but can't even establish a chain of custody for its
footballs, is going to presume to chastise New England when it has its own employees going rogue? This latest mess has nothing to do with Ballghazi.
It's also completely exonerated the Patriots.