LOL. "Investigation." Where's the hundred-page report, the cooked up "science" and the "less probably aware than not" language. Oh, and the false leaks to ESPN?
To be fair, the league wasn't ever going to do anything about this regardless of Deflategate. My hope is that the Al Jazeera reporter has some more info that can later be released to embarrass the NFL but not getting my hopes up.
I'm still angry about this one. You have Colts Jets and Ravens on one side. Pats on the other everyone else in between.
And Denver. Watch them throw the book at the worst guy on that list. Does the WWE...err NFL even care that they are looked at as a joke? Probably not
Just because Pats fans whine doesn't make it any less true that the NFL and ESPN truly appear to have it out for the franchise.
Exactly. There was one source in this. If he is uncredible, why are the cases against the others proceeding? Oh, that's right, because it's really about NFLPA vs. Commisioner's powers.
In the espn.com story that tells us the difference between the Manning and Brady cases, they argue that it really is about the cooperation angle.
It's not just that, the argument ignores that he was suspended 4 games before "lack of cooperation" ever became an issue. I don't care what they did/did not find during the appeal, that punishment was not changing.
So we are just going to run with the assumption that the credibility of the source will not be given equal weight in the investigation of the other players.
This part isn't true, I don't think. In Vincent's original letter to Brady, he mentions a lack of cooperation. Here's a relevant portion:
Where do I say anything about Brady? If anything, my post more has to do with the angle you mention than any Brady-centric conspiracy theory.
I do love the last few lines of that letter. It is sad when the truth and scientific fact gets in the way (contradicts) the fantasy spun by the NFL during the entire saga.
No problem - it's hard to keep everything in order. I think (if I remember correctly), what happened later was that before his appeal, Brady told Goodell that he "destroyed" his cell phone. That got leaked to Stephen A. Smith. That is what people remember about the "lack of cooperation" on Brady's part. But they had already determined that he had not cooperated fully. I think part of that was on the part of the Patriots - they didn't let them interview Jastremski or McNally like a 6th time, this last time immediately following the discovery of the "deflator" text. Part of it was Brady not handing his phone over in the first place. But yeah, people remember him "destroying" it before the appeal.
If the NFL was concerned about the perception of a thorough review it wouldn't have exonerated Manning with a terse, uninformative statement. The players have ample reason to believe that NFL "justice" is capricious, biased and arbitrary.
So the investigation went:
Which, taken together with the #DFG fight, tells me that the League is picking for fights right now over the CBA – seemingly intentionally pushing the absolute limits of their powers at every opportunity so as to put them front and center in the next negotiation. Which beg(gar)s the question:
I'm reminded of the story of the Scorpion and Frog. It's well known that Roger is just another big ego, narcissistic, that is not half as smart as he thinks he is. It's in his nature to push and fight the union as much as possible. I'm not even sure there is a long term plan here, outside of Goodell wanting to be right and powerful. A labor stoppage is not good for anyone in the short or long term. I'm sure he and the owners may think the answer is money and to some extent that may be true, but I think it's a much more primal and short-sighted motivation.
The fact that the NFL might have shot themselves in the foot in a rush to exonerate Saint Manning is just perfect.
Do the owners actually want an 18 game schedule at this point? It's almost impossible to keep a significant percentage of even top tier players playing a full 16 games.
