SCANDAL ROCKS THE NFL! Footballs Were Under-Inflated During the Patriots-Chiefs Game!
cmannphoto. Getty Images.Roger Goodell on under-inflated footballs in 2015:
"[T]he rules have to be enforced on a uniform basis and they apply to everybody in the league. They apply to every club, every individual coach, every individual player and that is something where we put the game ahead of everybody.
One of the primary responsibilities for the commissioner is to protect the integrity of the game and to do what's right for the game of football. That's my job. I made this clear at Super Bowl. It's our job to determine if there are violations of our rules, of our policies, of our procedures, and to enforce those. It's my job here to make sure we protect the integrity of the game and we are protecting our policies, our procedures."
Hear, hear, I say. Truer words were never spoken. Rules. Responsibilities. These are good. Violations. They are bad. Integrity of the game. Protecting policies and procedures. These are of paramount importance. Everything in the game of football depends on them.
And no issue is more vital to protecting the game than that the air pressure in the game balls is in the range of 12.5 to 13.5 psi. Why, you may ask? What codified that specific measurement into the NFL rule book? Because that's what is says on the back of the box that Wilson balls are sold in.
And without it? If anyone should deviate in any way above or below that range? Anarchy. Chaos. Bedlam. Pandemonium. Ragnarok. So thank Goodellness we solved that problem once and for all. It took the slandering of greatest player of all time and the attempted destruction of the greatest Dynasty ever. But thanks to making examples of those cheating cheaters, all the corruption was eliminated from this sacred game for good. And now we can sleep peaceably at night, safe in the comfort of knowing that Ginger Satan's precious integrity has been restored.
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Or maybe not.:
Source - Following their loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, Patriots special teamers were visibly upset in the locker room on Sunday due to an error by the officiating staff. According to multiple sources, the footballs that are meant for each team’s kicking units were underinflated by two pounds.
After team complaints, officials took the ‘K-Balls’ into the locker room at halftime where they were discovered to weigh 11 pounds per square inch instead of the legal limit of 13.5, per sources. …
“They were all sitting around at 11 PSI. The threshold is usually 13.5,” a source told MassLive. “(The Patriots) told the refs they were a little under inflated or they felt that way. At halftime, they confirmed and obviously put air in them.”
The Patriots sideline noticed something was amiss when Harrison Butker’s opening kickoff landed at the 3-yard line, allowing for a Jalen Reagor return on a mild December day in Foxborough. This season, Butker has hit 87.1% of his kickoffs for touchbacks. As the half went on, the team noticed that the trajectory and hang time of kickoffs and punts were lower than usual. Another source noted that the kicking balls were unusually soft to the touch.
With each kick, punt, and kickoff attempt, it felt like something was off and it appeared to impact each team.
Geez, this is really awkward, huh? And it explains a lot:
Funny thing though. Didn't the NFL take complete control over the game balls? They established Chain of Custody over them like evidence in a murder trial after all those shenanigans with the Patriots game day employee who stopped to take a leak on his way to the field before that Indy game in 2015. The way the league spoke about this issue, it sounded like Brink's trucks would be taking them out to the field under armed guard. But now that I'm thinking of it, the following season the Patriots had a home game, and the officials got to Gillette and realized they'd left the game balls in their hotel room in Boston. The concierge had to go in and retrieve them and the State Police had to rush them to Foxboro.
As a matter of fact, the NFL vowed it was going to do a season-long study, testing the air pressure of random balls around the league and it all different weather conditions in order to refute the claims the Patriots balls tested low because it a cold, wet night in Foxboro. Then they were going to release those figures because "transparency" is Goodell's safety word. Strange how he never got around to actually doing it. I remember him being asked about it and he said he didn't know but he'd look into it and get back to us. Must've totally slipped his simple mind.
But now that we've got an entirely new Deflategate scandal, there's no way Der Kommissar is going to just look the other way. I look forward to the multi-million dollar investigation. Phone records handed over, like they did to The Deflator and Dorito Dink. Shady Science-for-Hire firms brought in to cook the data. Depositions taken. Leaks to friendly media types to skew the public narrative. And above all, a fair hearing where the outcome is decided before it's even begun. Because that's how this works. I've seen this movie.
All sarcasm aside, the NFL put under-inflated footballs into a game that, unlike the AFC championship game nine years ago, took actual points off the board and effected the betting lines. Heads should absolutely fucking roll for this. But we'll never hear another word about it. Because to do so would expose the hypocrisy of the whole thing. I've seen this movie too.