Deflation-gate

Agreed. They did access the cell phone data of the two Patriot equipment guys, and incriminating texts from Brady did not show up.I do find destroying the cell phone disturbing and suspicious, but I also have some questions to throw out to anyone reading this thread. Is it common for people to destroy their old cell phones after getting a new one? (I still have my old cell phone from 2003.) Do cell phones really remember every text you ever sent? Can you delete an old text message, or is it just removed from the list but remains in memory? Does that text message history go away when you get a new cell phone, or does it transfer over like your contact list? Given that Brady's cell phone could contain confidential financial and legal information, do lawyers perhaps always advise clients with significant net worths to destroy their old cell phones? (So that they're not sitting for years on a shelf in a closet just waiting to be burgled.)--Percy

Here in New England I think we almost all feel for the guy, but interestingly, yesterday's Boston talk radio was all over the place and mostly contradictory. A common response was castigation of the comments and actions of Kraft, Brady and Belichick, followed by strong expressions of belief that there was no proof of any tampering and that the suspension should be rescinded.It takes 24 owners to remove a commissioner, and there are a number of owners who don't like Kraft and are enjoying his current travails, but I do believe that Goodell has signed his own death warrant. It could take two or three years, maybe longer, but his days are numbered, even though that number may be around a thousand. It may even take an unusual form, where instead of Goodell's removal the powers of the commissioner are restructured and redistributed. It will have to involve the collective bargaining agreement with the NFLPA, which runs through 2020, so things should definitely happen by 2020. The reason things could happen before 2020 is because if Goodell sees the handwriting on the wall that the new collective bargaining agreement will emasculate the powers of the commissioner, he may be willing to negotiate a change to the current agreement earlier.Tom Brady says that his equipment guys do an excellent job preparing the footballs for each week's game, and that when he picks out the prepped footballs that he wants for the game, in his mind they're perfect and he doesn't want them changed in any way. I think anyone who has played a sport at a high level and understands how important it is to have equipment you feel comfortable with will strongly identify at a gut level with what Tom Brady is saying and knows that this is a very honest and sincere expression. Conspiring with his equipment guys to adjust the pressure of footballs he already thinks are perfect makes no sense at all. What he wants is for his equipment guys to deliver footballs to him for inspection that are within league rules 12.5 to 13.5 psi so that the refs won't change them.About the destroyed cell phone, that's a complete red herring. The NFL has the cells phones of the equipment guys. If Brady sent them texts about football pressure, or if they had sent him texts about football pressure, then those texts would have been on those cell phones. The NFL didn't need Brady's cell phone, they were advised before it was destroyed that it would not be provided to them under any circumstances, and given the history of failure of sports organizations for keeping secure information secure, this seems extremely prudent.--Percy

This headline from a Boston paper says it all: Judge to NFL: ‘Is there any direct evidence linking Mr. Brady to tampering?’--Percy

If the judge's thinking is anywhere similar to your own there seemed no hint of it. My comment was more directed at people who have been closely following today's news. I was only focusing attention on what I thought was the key question by the judge because I think it best hints at his thinking - the Boston Globe evidently thought so, too.The judge's questions also provided a few clues to the NFL and to Brady as to how he views certain aspects of the case:

• The NFL's most recent settlement offer that required Brady to accept the findings of the Wells Report and in effect admit guilt is not a serious settlement offer.
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• The evidence in the Wells Report doesn't support either the conclusions or the punishment (at one point the judge asked, "Is that all you got?").
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• There *was* tampering (some don't think the judge's mind is actually made up about this, but his questions did seem to assume that tampering had actually occurred).
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• Brady should have been more cooperative with the Wells investigatory team.

--Percy

Roger Goodell vs. Tom Brady: The Ultimate Revenge-of-Mediocrity StoryContains a good summary of just what was so wrong about BountyGate. The NFL's accusation that the Saints were paying bounties for injuring other players made no sense, and now we can see just how senseless it was.--Percy

Uh, okay. Obviously you see a meaningful difference there, but to me it looks like a distinction without a difference. It would be like trying to draw a distinction between "many" and "plenty" - they're not precise synonyms, but people use them interchangeably all the time and have no trouble being understood. "Evidence 'directly linking'" and "direct evidence" are pretty much the same thing, and I won't be creating a special distinction in my mind just for discussions with you that they're not. Besides, in discussions like this most people can't keep in mind especially precise definitions for long anyway. It is also often the case, especially here, that making oneself clearly understood requires explaining things several times in different ways using different words.I can see that you want to frame the discussion in terms of precise definitions of direct and circumstantial evidence, but much of what we're talking about is what other people say, and they're not privy to the precise definitions you want to use. When someone writes or is reported as saying "direct evidence" or "evidence directly linking" or "circumstantial evidence," you can't go to your definitions and claim that those are what they meant. It wasn't a statement by the judge, it was his actions. The NFL opened by stating (among other things) that the Wells report wasn't at issue, and then the judge went right after the Wells report. The media is buzzing about this, and about the fact that all the legal experts had said this wouldn't be about the facts of the case, it would be about how well the NFL followed the process agreed to with the NFLPA, and what does the judge do first? He goes after the facts of the case.The judge was seeking the chain of evidence linking Brady to tampering and found none. It was amazing to "see" the NFL hold up the Wells report and state (paraphrasing), "We have extensive evidence proving Brady's link to football tampering," only to have Berman at one point incredulously ask, "Is that all you have?" Which is the same question many have been asking all along.--Percy

Gregg Williams denied everything, then emerged from a closed door meeting with Goodell, admitted everything, and apologized. He spent a year out of football, then returned to work with another team. Bountygate became a "fact."Now look at the similarity to Brady. The NFL offered Brady a settlement wherein he would accept the Wells report and admit guilt. Had Brady done that, Deflategate would have become a "fact" just like Bountygate.Is the similarity to Chinese communist show trials apparent, where the trial is conducted behind closed doors, after which the convicted person confesses and apologizes? The NFL is using its power to turn their fantasies into reality. Coaches and teams have little recourse, so coaches like Williams and Payton and teams like the Saints and Patriots just have to swallow hard and take their medicine. The coaches have to give the NFL what it wants by admitting to enough to justify all the time and money spent, as do the teams by accepting penalties in terms of money and loss of draft choices. But players have the NFLPA. In Bountygate the coaches and team took all the punishments, and all the player suspensions were later vacated in court.--Percy

That wasn't the point. The point was that that's the deal the NFL was offering, and history tells us that this is standard operating procedure for them, namely to try to fabricate history by intimidating coaches and players into owing up to things that they may not have done and that may even have never actually happened. It's been very effective with coaches (though not with Belichick, who signed an agreement with the NFL for Spygate and then failed to live up to it, except for paying the fine), but not with players. The players lose during NFL arbitration, but almost invariably win when they go to court. No, I'm not saying that. See my previous paragraph. You mean audio, not video. I wasn't arguing that Williams did nothing. I was pointing out that the NFL forced Williams to accept their take on what happened. Undoubtedly some things in their report are true, and just as undoubtedly some things are false, and we know some must be false because when the NFL went after the players their accusations collapsed in court, who have the NFLPA in their corner. Williams had no such help. His best bet was to fall on his sword and seek reinstatement as quickly as possible. The Wikipedia accounts you're reading (Gregg Williams; New Orleans Saints bounty scandal) reflect mostly the NFL position. Losing track of what's true and what's not and what's somewhere in the middle is the result of allowing the NFL to use their coercive powers to enter their version of events into the history books.--Percy

If there's an unbroken chain of evidence, that's direct evidence. If you have a collection of facts consistent with more than one account of events, that's circumstantial. It's hard to imagine how the destruction of possible evidence of events concerning football deflation can constitute part of a chain of evidence of football deflation. "Says it all" is an English idiom or colloquialism used for emphasis. It isn't meant to be taken literally.Robert Heinlein once wrote about a course he took in the military about giving commands. Part of the course addressed making commands as unambiguous as possible, and so the class would pick apart command examples by trying to find possible alternative but unintended interpretations. You would have done well in that class.--Percy

There doesn't seem to be any doubt down in New York that the footballs were intentionally deflated, but On the Wells report from the American Enterprise institute gets down and dirty into the PSI issues, even down to the order in which the football inflation pressures were checked at halftime. From their conclusions:

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The evidence we present points to a simpleand innocentexplanation for the change in pressure in the Patriots footballs. The Patriots balls were measured at the start of halftime, whereas the Colts balls were measured at the end of halftime, after sufficient time had passed for the balls to warm up and return to their pregame pressure. There is no need to consider the alternative hypothesisthat the Colts illegally inflated their footballsbecause a simple physical explanation is available.

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The fact that the average pressure of the Colts balls was significantly above the prediction of the Ideal Gas Law, while that of the Patriots balls was not, is inconsistent with the findings of the Wells report. Our conclusion that the warming of the balls during halftime is the key factor overlooked in the Wells report is supported by the observation that the readings of the intercepted Patriots football, measured separately from the other Patriots balls, came in almost precisely at the prediction of the law. Under the hypothesis asserted by the Well report, the odds of this Patriots ball matching the Ideal Gas Law prediction were between 1 out of 3 and 1 out of 300. It is therefore unlikely that the Patriots deflated the footballs.

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--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

When I played tennis one time at the base of Copper Mountain (elevation near 10,000 feet) about 75 miles from Denver, I couldn't use the balls I brought with me. I had to use special low pressure high altitude balls so that they didn't launch from the rackets like rockets. The lower air pressure still had a profound effect as there wasn't much air to slow the ball down. Shots hit with enough power to be effective could easily go out, even if hit with heavy topspin, so you had to slow your shots down. It felt like you were exposed hitting such slow shots, but of course your opponent is having the same problem keeping the ball in as you are. The most effective strategy was taking the net, because it's hard for the opponent to get the ball to stay low, and if he hits with power for a pass it'll likely go out.Even though I played just that one time out there, upon my return home it took a couple weeks before I stopped letting in balls go by me at the net.I recently watched the finals of a clay court tournament at altitude somewhere in South America. It was very strange seeing pros hit such soft balls.--Percy

Judge Berman continued to hammer away at the NFL in a New York courtroom yesterday.The judge raised what may become a key point in his final ruling. Though it probably seems minor and arcane to most laypeople, apparently the NFL seriously erred when they failed to allow NFL Executive Vice President Jeff Pash to be questioned by NFLPA lawyers during Brady's appeal. Pash helped Wells compile his report and made other contributions to the NFL's prosecution of the case. Berman commented that other arbitration rulings have been overturned for problems like this.Berman also said the Wells report's claim that Brady was "generally aware" of ball deflation was too vague, and that there was no connection in the report to the Patriots/Colts game that was the basis for the suspension. Referencing Goodell's jump from Brady being "generally aware" in the Wells report to Brady actually running a "scheme" in Goodell's appeal ruling, the judge called it a "quantum leap."Settlement talks appear to going nowhere. Brady will not admit wrongdoing, and the NFL is entrenched in its demands that Brady admit wrongdoing and accept the language of the Wells report. The judge has ordered Goodell and Brady back into court on August 31 if there is no settlement by then.The basis of the NFL's position may be a 1986 arbitration case between MLB and pitcher Steve Garvey. Garvey lost the arbitration ruling and challenged it in court. The case wended its way through the court system for years before the Supreme Court finally ruled 8-1 against Garvey and for MLB in 2001. In the end the court felt they had to respect the arbitration agreement, no matter how "arbitrary or silly" a ruling made under that agreement might appear.Neither side is budging and there will be no settlement by August 31, so because the judge may be unable to issue a ruling in time for the start of the season, Brady will seek an injunction preventing enforcement of the suspension until the ruling is made. When the ruling is finally made, whichever way it goes the losing side will appeal. If the losing side is Brady he will again seek an injunction. The aforementioned MLB case took 16 years, so as long as Brady can get injunctions he can continue to play. Brady is 38 now, so how much longer will he be an active player in the NFL? Certainly not 16 years.In other words, even in the worst case scenario for Brady where he continually loses in court, as long as he can successfully obtain injunctions he will never serve the suspension.Many legal experts have been predicting that Brady will lose because, in the end after all the appeals, courts and judges almost invariably side with arbitration rulings, but even these experts are beginning to see chinks in the NFL's legal armor.The NFL was never prepared for a case like this. They're usually faced with the fact that somebody did something, and then they only have to investigate the details of what somebody did. But this case was different. In this case they had to figure out whether somebody had actually done something. They needed detectives, but they instead hired lawyer Ted Wells. They needed to start with no assumptions, but they instead began with the assumption that deflation had happened and then went about seeking evidence to support it. When you think you already know what happened then you settle for sparse and circumstantial evidence, and that's what happened in both the Wells report and in Goodell's conclusions after the appeal hearing.--Percy

This is from Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald (Tom Brady is winning, so why should he settle?):

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If this was a prize fight, the referee would be issuing a mandatory eight count to Roger Goodell and the NFL, given the highlights of yesterday’s Manhattan court session.

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At this stage, we’re well past the standing eight count. Goodell and his team are down on the mat and perilously close to being knocked out the way these proceedings have gone, with judge Richard Berman once again hammering away at the Wells Report and the NFL commissioner by extension.

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And this is from Bob McGovern, also of the Boston Herald (Tom Brady's team sacks NFL in court):

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What the Patriots did to the Colts on that fateful January evening was a loving embrace compared to the brutal browbeating the NFL is taking during the ongoing Deflategate litigation. Yesterday was supposed to be about making final arguments to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman, who is prepared to rule on the case on Sept. 4, before the season opener.

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Instead, Berman and Jeffrey Kessler, Tom Brady’s union affiliated lawyer, ganged up on the league’s attorneys and pointed to gaping holes in their case.

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--Percy

This is from today's Sports Illustrated: What to make of judge's criticisms of NFL's case against Tom Brady. It's by Michael McCann of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute of the University of New Hampshire.He makes a few points not made elsewhere. Most interesting was where he said that a ruling in favor of Brady only covers Goodell's upholding of the arbitration award where he affirmed the four game suspension. The NFL could still decide to conduct another appeal hearing.--Percy

In his opinion piece in The Conversation, law professor H Brian Holland asks, "Deflategate has never been about footballs — so what, exactly, is the NFL up to?" An excellent question!Holland says that it's actually all about power. In the 2011 CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) the NFLPA negotiated away all control over discipline, placing it fully in the hands of Roger Goodell in return for a bigger share of league revenue. Goodell isn't interested in fairness or consistency or even evidence - he's only interested in power. The CBA gave him the power, it's his, and he's not going to give it up. Doesn't the judge realize that the commissioner can do whatever he likes regarding discipline as long as he follows the process outlined in the CBA? (For those interested, here's the text of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.)Holland suggests that Goodell doesn't realize that the CBA doesn't forfeit the NFL players' reasonable expectation of what all labor in this country expects and is entitled to: fair and consistent treatment. When the NFLPA signed the CBA, they did not sign away the right to due process with conclusions based upon evidence. In other words, the NFL can't just write a report, claim it proves their case, then declare case closed. The report *does* have to actually prove their case, otherwise the process isn't fair and consistent. The truth isn't just whatever the NFL says it is.And this is perhaps why Judge Berman keeps harping about the facts of the case. If the NFL truly doesn't care whether the evidence supports their case (and that's sure the way they're arguing when they keep pointing out to the judge that only process is at issue in this court challenge and that he's just there to rubber stamp their decision), then the NFL's process truly was arbitrary and capricious, and Judge Berman will overturn it.I liked the article's conclusion: "And a loss in this case may well spell the end for Roger Goodell." But I actually disagree. If Goodell wins and Brady sits out four games then I think that Kraft, one of the more powerful owners in football, will gradually marshall his forces, and after two or three years Goodell will be forced out. But if Goodell loses then his power will be greatly diminished, and forcing him out early may just not be worth the effort.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.Edited by Percy, : Grammar.