

In baseball, only umpires handle game balls. Doctoring them with pine tar, sandpaper or saliva is against the rules, but guys have pitched their way into the Hall of Fame doing it and fans mostly admire their gamesmanship. It’s clear that NFL rules pretty much encourage customizing footballs; also that slight differences in pressure mean nothing to anybody except the guy throwing them.


In the Boston Globe, Neal Gabler writes, “It speaks to a sea-change in our perception of human nature. Whether it is Brady, or Hillary Clinton and her e-mails, or Bill and his Foundation, or Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, we reflexively now always assume the worst about people. No one gets the benefit of the doubt.”

I wouldn’t go that far, but Gabler’s examples are well chosen. It’s certainly true that once somebody like Brady (or Hillary Clinton) has been targeted, it’s almost impossible for them to get even-handed treatment in the scandal-mongering media. “Deflategate” has been driven by inaccurate, insider-driven reporting from the get-go. As usual, Bob Somerby’s Daily Howler blog has been all over it: “As with most of our consensus scandals,” he writes, “the scandal our press corps has dubbed ‘Deflategate’ began with some false information ... At ESPN and at NBC Sports, major journalists attributed this false information to unnamed ‘NFL sources.’ Apparently, the bad information was being dispensed by people within the league.”

ESPN’s “investigative reporter” Chris Mortensen got the party started just before the Super Bowl:

“The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots’ 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL’s requirements, league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game told ESPN ... The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what’s required by NFL regulations.”

A veritable chorus of televised outrage began that has basically never let up. NBC Sports correctly reported what we now learn via the league’s own Wells Report, that the real numbers were closer to 1 pound under the 12.5 psi standard -- pretty much what the physics of gases would predict of a ball inflated in a 70-degree locker room and exposed to mid-40s temperatures for a couple of hours.

However, hardly anybody outside Boston noticed.

The offending football was measured three times. Again via the Wells Report, the resulting numbers were 11.45 psi; 11.35 psi; 11.75 psi.

So why are we still talking about this foolishness?


“Sure, deflating the balls must’ve helped the Patriots but maybe more it helped pretty Tom Brady, the Golden Boy, hang onto that immortality mode for an overtime ... it was vanity as much as victory that drove Tom Brady ... ”

So why would the NFL want to tear down one of its marquee stars? Beats me. Napoleon probably said it best: “Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”


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