As fans everywhere continue to wallow, rejoice, or roll their eyes over the recent events that brought Deflategate back into the public eye, it would appear that there is a bit of confusion regarding exactly what went down over the past...well, over the past year plus. There seem to be those of the opinion that Tom Brady was re-found guilty of tampering with footballs on Monday after being declared innocent by Judge Berman last August. Folks who think that he did it, that he's a cheater, and that cheaters never win think that the 2nd Circuit Judges finally allowed truth and honor to prevail when they re-instated Brady's suspension, and folks who think he's innocent feel that Judges Chin and Parker completely ignored the science and the flawed investigation that led to Berman overturning the suspension in the first place.
And both of those groups would be wrong.
Nothing that has taken place in a court of law, this year or last, has anything whatsoever to do with guilt or innocence. Whether Tommy B participated in a ball deflation scheme is completely and utterly irrelevant at this point. That ship sailed a long time ago, and on it the opinions of those who were going to think he was guilty no matter what. What has been under scrutiny over these past months is the process by which discipline was meted out based on the language of the CBA. Whether or not Roger Goodell was within his rights as Commissioner to enact punishment as he sees fit, to accept some testimonies (like the "best recollection" of a referee) and flat out reject others (the sworn testimony of Tom Brady). Whether Roger Goodell played by the rules that were co-written by the NFLPA and didn't overstep his bounds when, despite an admitted ignorance of The Ideal Gas Law and the acknowledgement that there is no accurate record whatsoever of the PSI of the footballs used in the 2014 AFC Championship Game and thus no viable starting point by which to measure air pressure, he decided that Tom Brady violated the integrity of the game and thus handed him a suspension usually reserved for PED violations. That's all that was being discussed here - procedure. And according to the 2nd Circuit, and according to Article 46 of the CBA, Roger Goodell was well within his rights to act how he did.
You can point to the science and the chemists and professors and experiments all you want. You can point to the false leaks and the poorly worded Wells report until you're blue in the face. You can scream about Deflator texts and destroyed cell phones and prior history until Jamarcus Russell gets another shot in the NFL. None of that matters and none of that has mattered for a year now. This was about the CBA, Article 46, and whether or not Goodell has the right to do pretty much whatever he wants. And the sad truth is that he does.
Why would the NFLPA agree to this? What could they possibly gain from ceding that much power to one man? Ultimately I can only guess, but if forced to answer, I would propose their reasoning is twofold:
- Other concessions were made elsewhere in the CBA that benefited the majority of NFL players. Most players aren't going to become subject to discipline that needs a Commissioner-generated ruling, and so the thought was concede absolute power in exchange for other benefits.
- The assumption was that Roger Goodell is good at his job and a competent executive.
Unfortunately, as evidenced time and time again, the NFLPA missed and missed big on item two. Roger Goodell is not good at his job from a league management and quality assurance standpoint. He's amazing at his job in terms of revenue generation and brand expansion (which is why the owners love him), but we can all point to myriad examples of the way the product of professional football has suffered immensely under his tenure. He's quick to buckle to public opinion. He backtracks on a whim. He never hesitates to increase profitability at the expense of the game itself. He is always in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. He's just a bad commissioner. And unfortunately, I personally don't know of any legally binding documents that have clauses, amendments, or schedules that delineate the repercussions of incompetence.
What this means long-term is yet to be seen, but I personally believe that the impact of this ruling is going to negatively impact negotiations of the next CBA, and another lockout is very much in the cards. This also now means that Goodell has precedent to impose any punishment at any time to any player for more or less any reason not explicitly and carefully outlined in the CBA as it stands now, and there's nothing anyone can do about it except take it. Whether you love Tom Brady or hate him, are ecstatic over the cheatycheet Cheatriots getting their comeuppance or think that the Pats got railroaded, this ruling has, once again, made the game of football worse.
And the NFLPA is just as much to blame as anybody.
So if you want to keep repeating the science and the deeply flawed process that was the Deflategae investigation, go for it. If you want to make the case that Deflategate was just a makeup call for Spygate leniency and almost two full decades of some of the most despicable, underhanded, tainted cheating the world has ever seen, knock yourself out. Neither of those stances factored into the Berman ruling or this most recent one in any capacity. This was a simple case of contract law and whether a contract allows for certain behaviors, and that's all there is to it. That the investigation was so thoroughly botched that two of the four judges called to hear the case thought there was enough misdeed to overturn the ruling is a stark example of just how bad Goodell is at his job, but innocence or guilt have been off the table for a while now. You don't have to like it, but that's the way it is. Goodell is the head of the NFL, and he can rule however he wants to.
That's the thing about a monarchy. It's actually a perfectly viable form of government - just so long as the king is competent. I just wish the NFL had found a Louis XIV instead of a Jeoffrey.