Chansky’s Notebook: Deflategate Fizzles

This is today’s Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook as heard on 97.9 WCHL. You can listen to previous Sports Notebooks here.

You can hear Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook below:

 

If it wasn’t Tom Brady, would the NFL have spent 5 million dollars?

The appeal of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension begins today in what has been called by objective fans and journalists as among the stupidest scandals in the history of sports. The PTI guys, Kornheiser and Wilbon, have likened it to the home team watering down the base paths or defensive linemen putting Vaseline on their shoulder pads. At very worst it was the gamesmanship of every game.

But because the New England Patriots and Brady are the love ‘em or hate ‘em champs of the National Football League, the investigation into Deflate-gate has taken on a life of its own and cost the NFL more than five million bucks to produce a 243-page memorandum called the Wells Report. Its author, attorney Ted Wells, will be at the appeal hearing in the NFL suite in Manhattan, as will Troy Vincent who handed down the over-the-top penalty to the Pats and Brady.

Over the top, because nothing like this has ever been handled in such a manner by the NFL. When the Vikings and Panthers were caught placing their footballs next to sideline heaters on a very cold day – to keep the balls from freezing and hardening – both teams were given a warning and told to cut it out. The NFL manual even says a team fooling with the footballs can get fined from $25,000 and up, but makes no mention of any individual player being penalized.

It all seems to hinge on Brady’s so-called lack of cooperation during the Wells investigation. Although he answered every question, he refused to let the league find out what was on his cell phone. And for that, Brady was seen as obstructing justice, even though the cell phone of every person Brady could have called or texted after the Deflate-gate game was reviewed by Wells.

Subsequent scientific studies weakened the report’s validity, and the NFL has no concrete proof that Brady knows anything at all. But Commissioner Roger Goodell would look foolish if he changed the verdict, and that seems to be the reason most people think at least two games of the suspension will stand up.

But with almost 2 million dollars of suspended game money to lose, plus his reputation and legacy, Brady promises to take this all the way to Federal Court if he is not exonerated. After all, after the Pats were supposedly caught red-handed, when the balls were checked by every measure short of NASA, Brady’s passing numbers were far better than with softer footballs.

My bet is that new info in appeal will deflate Deflate-gate.