DeflateGate

Deflategate has dominated the sports world for seven months now.  It started after the Indianapolis Colts reported that the New England Patriots game balls seemed flat.  After testing the game balls it turned out they were under the league minimum ball pressure.  Two weeks later the Patriots won the Super Bowl, while the NFL hired Ted Wells to do an independent investigation.

During the investigation Tom Brady and the New England Patriots maintained their innocence, however outside of New England very few believed them.  This was their own doing though after all eight years ago we dealt with Spygate.

The Wells report came back and to some helped vindicate the Patriots and Tom Brady.  The NFL however felt they found enough proof in the Wells report to hand out a four game suspension to Tom Brady as well as fining the Patriots one million dollars as well as a first and fourth round draft pick.  The Tom Brady suspension was puzzling, as in the Well’s report it stated, “Tom Brady was more probable than not generally aware of the deflating of footballs.”  Words like Probable and Generally aware do not add up to a four game suspension.

Fast forward to July and Tom Brady’s appeal hearing that is being heard by NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodel the same person who handed out the suspension.  During the appeal hearing we found out during the investigation Tom Brady destroyed his cell phone that could have had evidence of his interactions with equipment managers.  With this information Goodell upheld the suspension.

Now here we are three days from the NFL season kickoff and Tom Brady won his appeal hearing in federal court and will take the field for the season opener against the Pittsburg Steelers.  Yet the NFL community is still talking about Deflategate, but why?  Is it just because the Patriots have gotten into trouble in the past?

How come as a society we support players that hit women and children, but persecute an organization for deflating a football?  It is time to move on from Deflategate, yet we cant the NFL is appealing the Federal Judge’s ruling meaning this will drag through the season providing a distraction instead of focusing on the game.

Tom Brady will go down in Football history as one of the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time.  Let’s move on from Deflategate and look forward to the next 22 weeks of Football.