Tom Brady Willing To Accept Fine In Deflategate, But Why Does It Matter?

People only care about winners, and in the case of Tom Brady, the NFL’s Player Association extended a settlement offer to the NFL regarding deflategate, ESPN reported, which was apparently met with “silence.”

According to media reports, Brady is refusing to accept any form of suspension, although he would consider accepting a fine.  If it were to go through, under the contract suspension, while the New England Patriots would start playing on September 10, he would not be able to play until the Oct. 18 game against the Indianapolis Colts.

On June 23, Brady came to New York City and appealed his four-game ban, with commissioner Roger Goodell serving as arbitrator. However, the NFL does not seem to be moving towards a rule on that appeal.

The Patriots begin their training camp next Thursday, and the star quarterback is allowed to participate in spite of the ban.

With all of the publicity deflategate has and still is getting, some can’t help but wonder, why does the whole thing even matter? Does a blowout win (in an unimportant game) last season somehow affect the whole outcome of the Superbowl in the present?

There are two main problems. The first is that it is unfair to the fans, players, and anyone paying to watch if the game is scripted. For people who have never caught a football, ball deflation seems like a small area of contention within a whole football game, but according to LiveScience’s question to Miguel Morales, an associate professor of physics at the University of Washington, it creates an easier environment to score.

Ideally, the way people are taught to catch it is to put their hands around the nose of the ball, that way, you’ve made a little cone with your hands, the ball goes in, and in that case, the pressure really doesn’t make any difference. But difficult plays can make it hard for players to catch the ball that way during games, he said. Oftentimes, players will end up squeezing the football with their hand and trapping it against their chests. If you can deform the ball, if you can pinch the ball, then it’s easier to stop.

So, if two teams of equal caliber (the Colts may or may not have been at the time) compete with one team with physics on their side, then it is a more obviously lopsided competition.

This brings up the next problem with the whole deflategate scandal. If the physics of the game is being tampered with, and a team benefits from it, with some players knowing that there is an advantage, isn’t that just plain cheating? And if that’s cheating, shouldn’t people involved be punished equally? Isn’t that why we have rules in place, so that we don’t witness a monarchic football dynasty?

But cheating comes in many forms (steroids, etc) but in most cases where the player is not a superstar, don’t people just take the punishment?

But perhaps being benched for four games is something that is just not fair.