MattM

I used to love Lucius Sanford (old number 57 out of Ga. Tech) as a kid--my favorite Bills player of that era for his name alone!

If you want to talk about disingenuous, recall that the Pats* first press salvo defending themselves from the non-compliance charge was to say that they'd made McNally available to the investigation 4 or 5 times already., when in reality all but one of those times was initially just talking to NFL folks before Wells got involved. Go back and look--they worded it in a deliberately murky way to imply that Wells talked to Needledumb multiple times. Total scumbags. You don't seem to understand how this game is played, Herr Doktor. A regulator (which to my mind is really what Wells was most like here) or investigator can talk to people as many times as he wants to. People can decide not to comply, but there are then sanctions for non-compliance.

Wow--that article was a blast from the past--a time when Florio wasn't totally in the Pats*' pocket, like he's been the last month or so. He's been positively schizophrenic on this topic over its life. On the original topic of why he didn't hand over phone evidence, I wonder if the request was so broad that it included evidence of any form of violating league rules. If so, that could obviously be a problem (see, for ex., Belicheat's offseason e-mails to Hernandez). Similarly, his turning things over may have also involved a certification by his lawyers as to the search, making lying tough. I'd wager one or both of these may be behind the failure to turn anything over or to claim there was nothing relevant to turn over (which he's never said).

I totally agree with all of the above. Would be nice to get into company, though

To quote an anonymous member of the NFL's Competition Committee in a NYT article post-Spygate "it was just one team, really, brought before us over and over again on suspicion of cheating". He was backed up by another unnamed member of said committee on that as per the same article.

I'm a lawyer, but admittedly not a labor lawyer. From what I've read elsewhere it sounds like the scope of review on appeal in a court action would be very narrow (ie, on something like the NFL having proper authority under its own rules to give this suspension), all of which would make it very difficult for Brady to win in court.

I'm a graduate of Columbia, so, yeah, I get that difference. (BTW, my Econ prof there was Sunil Gulati, now head of US Soccer--great guy and great teacher). Thanks for the link. Without knowing too much about it's methodology, have to question any ranking that has both Reinhart and Rogoff still among their most top trusted/influential after a UMass grad student found major errors in their seminal work, but that may just be me.....

Grandstanding? I gave several good reasons why Hassett is really not any authority here (or, to thinking people anywhere, on anything). In terms of your original statement on him having gone through peer review "dozens of times", I highly doubt AEI material is peer reviewed, but could be wrong. In terms of academia, he was only a professor (at Columbia B-School) for about 5 years--perhaps he published dozens of article while there, but if so, that would make him much more prolific than the average B-school prof. The AEI report sought to focus on the weak link in the public opinion war--since most people don't understand the science, it made it the easiest to attack, so they hired their version of a hit man to do so. Plain and simple. Folks understand the texts, so after their initial foray into trying to explain those away (to wit, "he was trying to lose weight"), they realized there was no way they could spin those, so they tried this tack. Judging by some of the responses on this thread, it seems to be working.

Hassett? You mean the guy who grew up probably a Pats* fan in MA and who brought us "Dow 36,000" right before the tech bubble crashed? The guy who after that brilliant move could only find work at AEI telling rich donors what they wanted to hear (those right wing think tanks will never go broke at least!)? The guy who's an economist and not even a physical scientist? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha......

Looking at all the facts, including the texts, I really don't see how one can think the Pats* did nothing here, and it's ridiculous to think that Tweedledum and Tweedledumber did anything to the footballs without Brady's knowledge. To me, all you needed to see were those texts, the receipt of gifts from Brady (did he give anything of similar value to others at Tweedledumber's level?) and the fact that Tweedledumber, who had no responsibility for footballs other than being the guy who brought them out to the field, was given a needle on game days. Case closed. 4 games.

Which is why it will be reduced down to 1 game, just in time to come back to play against us....

And his "defense" clearly shows that Brady is firmly in the company of Messrs. Armstrong, Rodriguez and Bonds it sounds like you admit....

First, for someone who believes Brady did it, you spend a lot of time defending the Pats*. As for Wells, it's kind of funny that Bob Kraft was for him before he was against him. The League hired an independent investigator (of course the League pays them, but they paid them the same regardless of the outcome) and this is what they got. No way in Hades would Goodell have "wanted" such a report as Pats* fans claim--one that has tarnished the League champion and marquee player. Second, I care who wrote the study because if the person who wrote it is indeed a diehard Pats* fan, then to me at least, that's relevant. You've read the tripe put forth by the Pats* (BB's BS science presser and "we called him the Deflator because he was on a diet" come to mind) and their fans, so you must know what I mean. As noted above, I also think what they're peddling is bunk designed to obfuscate enough in the eyes of the casual follower to create wiggle room in public opinion. As for defending Brady, that's why I'm not a litigator--you often have to make BS arguments on behalf of your client. I think this case (like Lance Armstrong, ARod and Bonds before it) show the death of shame in America. Instead of admitting a wrong when caught, this generation instead plays the "you can't prove it" and "I'll spin until I die" game. Kind of sickening really, if you ask me,

First, if a study purports to be "independent" that should be tested--here either a rooting interest or money (or possibly both) could be behind the authors' efforts. Since the primary author grew up in MA, I think the rooting interest is a fair question. You don't--we'll agree to disagree on that--and we'll both never know if someone paid for that particular piece of "research". On the independence of the NFL report, the only people who think the NFL League office (Kraft's lap dog lo all these years as evidenced by his nickname of the Deputy Commissioner around the League) are somehow out to get the Pats* and taint their own SB Champion and thereby their whole League/sport (one of the dumbest things ever if true) live in New England*. I gave my opinion of their argument--that all of this is explained by the Colts' balls being tested a few minutes after the Pats* balls. No mention of how the texts fit in, or Tweedledum taking a bathroom break and then not correctly IDing the type of toilet he used, or Brady's mad dash of texts and calls to Jastremzski after the story broke (including my favorite "We good, buddy?"), someone he hadn't called or texted in the prior 6 months otherwise) or Brady's refusal to hand over his own messages on the topic (including possibly to others than Tweedledumb and Dumber). What's your view of what happened--straight up, what's your view of what happened? If you think nothing happened, explain away the texts and all the other scummy looking behavior.

As noted, I'll take the evidence and thoughts of real scientists trained in physics to explain the psi levels in the balls over the conjecture of a couple of public policy/tax wonks any day of the week, whether it's on the Ideal Gas Law or its application here (including how the evidence was gathered). As for the AEI report, I also stand by the idea that one should know who paid for such report--the "beauty"/evil of organizations like AEI is that their tax status often shields their donors. Here, we have no idea if AEI was in fact paid to help write this report. Similarly, I'd love to find out if Hassett is indeed a Patriots* fan. Florio should ask him that before writing the fawning piece he did over the weekend. Same pattern that we've already seen from the Pats* here over and over again--try to take one tiny little piece of a whole puzzle that overwhelmingly screams cheating and try to insert doubt on one little piece via sleight of hand in order to get people to focus on the sleight of hand rather than the screaming evidence of cheating. For ex., how's this: Here's a conversation about the guy who takes the balls to the field after the refs measure them and giving him a needle (what the heck for other than deflating footballs) with a reference to Brady's passer rating thrown in? Yeah, they're totally innocent. LMFAO. We're just supposed to ignore this? Plenty more, too, where those texts came from. On your point about the Wells report being paid for by the League, you must be sniffing something if you think the League wanted to nail their Super Bowl championship team and SB MVP/Golden Boy. This is the biggest black eye that the League has suffered since...well... Spygate. See a pattern? What a ridiculous line of argument, especially considering that Kraft helped select Goodell, is one of three owners who determines his pay and has been nicknamed the "Deputy Commissioner" by others in the League. No way, Roger wanted to intentionally go after them. Remember, too, that he's also the guy who destroyed all the evidence last time they go caught--yeah, he's a real Patriot* hater. Hey, speaking of Patriot* favoritism, that Alphonzo Dennard suspension for pleading out a DUI's coming any day now, right? Finally, Hassett's record for being spectacularly wrong speaks for itself, from his place of employment to, more specifically, his own work, which would be considered comic gold were it not for the fact that many gullible folks acted on his ridiculous claims of a roaring market being nowhere near done. How many chances do some of these jokers get before people point out that the Emperor has no clothes?

I re-read the NYT article and it is indeed ridiculous--they are basically saying that the Colts' balls were measured later indoors and therefore warmed up more than the Pats*' balls (measured probably only a few minutes before the Colts' balls, considering all of this was done in less than a 15 minute halftime time span) and that that explains the whole thing. I'd call it yet another attempt to obfuscate the issue by the Pats* and their fans by isolating one little thing out of the whole tableau trying to create reasonable doubt. On the physics involved, I'll stick with the results of the actual physicists hired by Wells, thank you very much. The two authors of the Times piece are economists and policy specialists, whose last physical science class, for all we know, was in high school. How and why anyone would care what they think about this issues is totally beyond me. Also explains why they make no mention of the sch*t-ton of evidence that there's something rotten in Denmark (the damning texts, the needle, the gifts, the repeated calls from Brady after the incident broke, Brady's refusal to cooperate, the Pats* refusal to fully cooperate ,etc.) On that point that you raised about asking to speak to the Deflator twice--first, that happens all the time in investigations (I'm not a litigator, but am an attorney) and is not unusual. The part where you're calling Ted Wells (and Brad Karp and others at Paul Weiss) incompetent is a real hoot--those guys are all business and among the very best in the business. As a buyer of outside counsel/Big Firm services, trust me, I know. What is unusual (and dishonest, if you ask me) was the Pats* initial explanation of why they didn't make McNally available--remember how they put out a press release saying we weren't going to make him available to Wells for a 5th interview since he'd been interviewed 4 times already, making it look like it was more reasonable to turn down the request? Turns out that Wells himself only talked to McNally once (the other two discussions had been informal discussions with NFL officials, pre-Wells hiring). Go back and read the PR and it's pretty clear that it's the Pats* who were trying to spin that in a way that wasn't really true. In terms of why the AEI is doing this, a little digging comes up with what I suspect is the answer--I'd wager that Kevin Hassett, who looks based on seniority to be the main author of the report, is a Pats* fan, considering where he was born and raised (Greenfield, Mass.) Wow--how convincing, a total fluff piece written by a Pats* fan lending his public policy think tank's name to a report on a matter that they really are in no way expert in. Bravo, sirs, bravo--nice try. Even better is the fact that Hassett was a co-author of "Dow 36,000"--how that guy ever got another job or is listened to by anyone about ANYTHING after that is beyond me, but then again, he does work at a conservative think-tank where public policy ideas that have proven to be totally worthless (the Sam Brownback/Art Laffer Kansas supply side tax cut experiment gone horribly awry when it met the real world comes to mind) are still seen despite all evidence to the contrary as being absolutely true and trust worthy. Kind of like a Bizarro World, where the rules of the real world don't apply. Here's his Wikipedia entry and some great quotes from it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Hassett "Hassett is coauthor with James K. Glassman of Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. It was published in 1999 before the dot-com bubble burst. The book's title was based on a calculation that, in the absence of the equity premium, stock prices would be approximately four times as high as they actually were. In its introduction, Glassman and Hassett wrote that the book "will convince you of the single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap....If you are worried about missing the market's big move upward, you will discover that it is not too late. Stocks are now in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average."[8] The Dow industrials index closed at 10,681.06 on the day of the book's publication[9] but by the end of 2004 it remained at essentially the same level – 10,783.01, having dropped over 25% in the meantime but recovered. As of March 9, 2009, the trough of the 2008–9 bear market, the Dow Jones was at 6,547.05, 81% below his 36,000 prediction. As of January 17, 2014, the Dow Jones was at 16,476.73, 54% below his 36,000 prediction." Good times, man, good times....

I know full well what AEI is. I also find it hard to believe that they got involved with this (or anything) except if it's paid for directly or indirectly (ie, at the request of a friend or donor). As noted previously, this is well outside their wheelhouse, as was the Saints' piece. Guilty as charged--I read both Florio's piece and the Times' article, but not the 16 page full piece on their website. Too little time. That said, what I read did not convince me. I'll take the scientific take of the actual scientists in this discipline Wells hired over these rent an economists/right wing policy wonks. Personally, all I needed to know was that an employee with no responsibility for game day footballs was known as "the Deflator" and was given a needle. All in their texts. What use did that guy have for a needle? I follow the evidence where it goes--the evidence shows one team over and over again skirting or breaking the rules. "Just one team, really, over and over again" to paraphrase an unnamed NFL Competition Committee member in the NYT a few years back.

I read that yesterday--Florio had a post on it in which he called it an "independent" report, but I have yet to see who paid for it. AEI is not doing a study like that for free or for the publicity, particularly something so far outside their usual (evil) wheelhouse. My guess is either the NFLPA, Brady or Kraft. Kind of need to know that, don't you think? I also loved how it focused on one small aspect of the case and tried its best to obfuscate that point, while totally ignoring things like the texts between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber, Brady's calls and texts to them in the immediate aftermath and Brady's refusal to turn over relevant messages. All of that points to one of the above being the "report's" patron.

I'm not sure that posters here are giving Russell Wilson enough credit. He may not be Manning, Brady or Rogers (or even Luck), but he's a gamer with the ability to hurt you with his arm, legs and head. If we could find someone half as good as he is, all elements considered, I think we win the East.

Looking back, I can't believe that the unexplained "extra frequency over the NFL allowed frequency" found in the Pats* radio system during Spygate, combined with Doug Flutie going on a Boston radio show and saying he once picked up the wrong QB helmet and heard the coaches talking to the QB well after the League-mandated cutoff (the best part is that Flutie apparently laughed about that and thought it was funny), didn't get much, much more play back then.....

I went today and was able to get 5 upper deck seats for the Giants game (a family gift) at about 9:15. Not bad seats and much cheaper than what I was contemplating on StubHub. The ticket agent did initially have trouble locating seats, however, as they were getting bought out from under him as we were talking. Sounded like this was a much different process/enthusiasm level than prior years. First time I've taken advantage of this ST benefit, but may need to try it again next year.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/06/05/49ers-anthony-davis-retires-at-age-25/ This is reaching X-File like proportions out there--half the team seems to have retired this offseason.....

If Montana got half the calls that the Pats* and Brady* have gotten over the years they would have won many more Super Bowls. Who can forget "just give it to them" or the ref "inadvertently" blowing his whistle on Nate Clements' pick six of Brady to seal a game a few years back (among many other awful, one-way calls in that game--so bad that TMQ had to write about the officiating in that game in his column) or more recently the 15 yarder on a key third down stop against Jerry Hughes last year for slapping his own teammate's helmet. That's just against us off the top of my head. Then you have the Tuck Rule, the absolute mugging of Colts' receivers without any calls during the 2004 AFCCG (that even led to a rule emphasis change the next year to help cover it up), the Monday night rip job against the Ravens that got Suggs and others on that team nearly fined, the obvious hold against the Saints last year on the game-winning last play of the game, one of my personal favorites (since the announcers never really understood the call), a very late flag against the Texans on what would have been a game losing pick of Brady that let the Pats* come back to win and on and on and on. If things truly balance out, the Patriots* aren't due for a good call going their way until about 2056. Make no mistake, there are other shoes to drop with respect to the Cheats*. Hold your views on who the GOAT is until all the evidence comes out.

And who knows what new scandal(s) involving Brady* and the Pats** will be common knowledge by then?

Or Belicheats*' ex-wife.