The single stupidest scandal in NFL history may finally be over. Deflategate reached a tentative conclusion on Thursday when Judge Richard Berman – tasked to rule on the fairness of the punishment levied by the NFL on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the Case Of The Somewhat Under-Inflated Footballs – nullified Brady’s four-game suspension.
As is par for the course in the most painfully paced televised drama since it became obvious the writers on Lost had no endgame, there was a delay before the judge reached a verdict. Berman initially said that he would make his ruling on Tuesday or Wednesday. He was a day late, but hey that means this whole thing is finished right?
Well, sort of. OK first some deflati... emotion dampening context. Deflategate is about as likely to stay dead as the villain in a Wes Craven film. Thursday’s ruling allowed for an appeal and the NFL have said they intend to do so. Let’s not think of that today. The judge’s decision, along with the imminent return of the NFL season, should at least mark the end of it as the leading story on SportsCenter.
Who knew a cheating scandal involving one of the league’s most recognizable players and the reigning Super Bowl champions would become tiresome? There wasn’t enough serious substance in Deflategate to sustain a B-plot in a sitcom, let alone a Will Smith movie.
There’s nothing interesting about air pressure, which what this whole thing was about. Some eight months ago, the Patriots were caught using underinflated footballs in the first half of a playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts. It was a game that New England eventually won 45-7 and, in fact, scored the majority of their points after they were mandated to use league-compliant equipment. If anything the Colts might have had a better shot during that game if the NFL had just let things be.
That was 18 January. It wasn’t until 6 May that the NFL released the 243 page Wells Report, which came to the inconclusive conclusion that it was “more probable than not” that the Patriots had tampered with the balls and that Brady knew about it.
On 11 May, the NFL decided that this educated guess was more than sufficient to suspend Brady for the first four games of the season, a decision that the NFLPA and Brady quickly appealed. That’s when things got extra silly, because we learned that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell himself, the furthest thing possible from an independent arbitrator, would handle the appeal.
Believe it or not, Goodell decided that he agreed with the punishment he helped set and declined to reduce Brady’s four game suspension. The league announced his verdict on 28 July, only a little over a month after Brady made his appeal. (Yes, the Deflategate process somehow actually sped up once it finally hit the US courts, which shouldn’t be possible.)
That’s not a lot of action in what was, by leaps and bounds, the biggest story in the NFL for the entirety of the offseason. After eight months, and man does it feel like hundreds, even the most juvenile among us stopped laughing at the jokes about football players and their balls.
The testicle jokes, as childish as they were, treated the proceedings with the exact amount of dignity that they deserved. Deflategate has made everybody involve look stupid, even if Goodell, by far the biggest fool in this mess, is still having a better summer than he did last year.
There was Brady magnifying how guilty he seemed by dispatching his cell phone, presumably to prevent the NFL discovering incriminating messages.
There was the Patriots’ spin that the assistant calling himself “The Deflator” in the text messages investigators were able to recover, was actually referring to his weight loss and not his alleged role in altering the game balls.
There was Patriots head coach Bill Belichick going full Mr Wizard by teaching an impromptu physics class to a mystified core of reporters in the lead-up to the Super Bowl.
There were the Patriots fans who attended quasi-ironic Free Brady events. Those were fantastic situations for people who wanted to represent every negative stereotype people have about New England sports fans while simultaneously mocking, whether intentionally or not, more serious protests.
And there was the story of the courtroom sketch artist who received angry threats for her surreal angular rendering of Brady and then had to “redeem” herself by producing a significantly more acceptable version on Monday.
These were the time-filling subplots we focused on while Deflategate was distracting us focusing on more important topics. The only saving grace in the Less Than Ideal Gas Law Saga has been Berman who, throughout the last weeks, has seemed appropriately embarrassed that Brady v Goodell dragged out to a point where the government had to step in.
For the most part, it feels like most of America shares Berman’s exhaustion. The main emotion to come out of today’s decision, no matter what one’s personal opinion on Brady or the Patriots happens to be, doesn’t seem to be joy, vindication, frustration or anger (although all of those are out there). It seems to be relief. It’s “more likely than not” that we won’t have to think about air pressure levels and ball tampering for the foreseeable future.
Brady’s first road game with the Patriots will be against the Buffalo Bills on 20 September, where he will face a stadium full of fans who probably think the quarterback and his team cheated back in January. Expect them to come up with the best possible ways to mock the defending champions. That feels fitting: the lasting legacy of the never-ending joke that was Deflategate really should be it becoming as a source of never-ending jokes.
