NFL Media scribe Mike Silver said that the New England Patriots rebuttal to the Wells Report was an insult to our intelligence. He may be on to something but stopped a little short. The entire football deflation business has been an insult to our intelligence. It starts with a stupid, arbitrary air pressure rule that dates to the early 1930s. A stupid, arbitrary rule that no one seems to care that it dates to the early 1930s. The NFL should care. Footballs have changed in 80 years. The manufacturer of the footballs has even changed in that time. Wilson didn't make NFL footballs until 1940. A lot has changed. The only thing that hasn't changed is a rule that no one cared about, let alone even knew existed, until this past January. Everything changed when Indianapolis Colts general manager Ryan Grigson alerted the NFL that the Patriots might be up to something sneaky with the footballs. That's when the stupidity started to inflate.
Common sense and a career in science is enough for me to know that the lack of initial football air pressure readings AND two disagreeing pressure gauges is enough to render any of the air pressure data laughable. Not one air pressure reading from the footballs used in the AFC Championship game is reliable. That and a rule that is seriously outdated should have been enough to keep the NFL from falling down this hole. The entire pregame handling of the footballs will be changed as early as next week's Owners Meetings. The fact that the an overhaul is required is a pretty good indication that the current process is in a single word, stupid. It's also a pretty good indication that the league punished Tom Brady and the Patriots for supposedly breaking shaky rules based on unreliable data.
Roger Goodell has had a year that would get about 99% of those in the workforce fired. He keeps doing the same stupid shit over and over again. He's making everything up as he goes. He's making every bad situation worse. He's issuing punishments as a sign that he can rather than the punishments that he should. There's a big difference between fair, even tough, and being stupid. Goodell is being stupid. He wanted to show everyone that he won't show leniency to his supposed pal Patriots owner Robert Kraft and the team's star quarterback. Goodell should have fixed a faulty, outdated, stupid rule and process and moved on for the good of the NFL. He shouldn't have brought the hammer down for the violation of rules that are about to be changed. Changes that should have been made about 75 years ago when Wilson started making the footballs.
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