Reader Email - 1 Year Later Sports Illustrated Is Just Getting Around To Doing Deflategate Experiments?

Reader Email

From: Katie Elliott
Subject: [chemgrads] Fwd: Sports Illustrated/The MMQB request for Deflategate experiment
Date: January 15, 2016 at 3:41:48 PM EST
To: chemgrads@lists.ncsu.edu

Hello All,

Let me know if you are interested in this opportunity.

Katie

************************************************************

My name is Kalyn Kahler and I am the editorial assistant for The Monday Morning Quarterback, themmqb.com. We are a website under Sports Illustrated that covers the NFL. I’m writing to you because we are looking for an expert in ideal gas law who can supervise an experiment we are doing that will roughly simulate the conditions of the Patriots Deflategate “scandal.” We intend to publish a story with the results of our experiment.

The weather in Raleigh for next Saturday, 1/23 looks very similar to that of the AFC Championship game of last year, when the Patriots footballs were oddly measured under the NFL-mandated PSI level. I have the experiment designed (we will most likely be using the football field and players at NC State for the experiment which is why I am reaching out to your chemistry department), and we have already done one rudimentary trial run, so I am just looking for someone within your Chemistry department to supervise the experiment so that we can be sure it is scientifically up to par (because we are a bunch of journalists) and lend us credibility.

The whole experiment would take about 3 hours in the afternoon (roughly 12-3 pm) and we would compensate the expert with $1,000.

Because of uncontrollable variables like altitude and atmospheric pressure, it’s clear that it will be impossible to re-enact the exact circumstances of deflategate. So we intend to frame our experiment not as an exact simulate, but as an experiment under similar conditions.

The whole reason that we are interested in doing our own experiment is because the NFL is not releasing any of the data they recorded during games this year, where they have been measuring PSI levels of the balls primarily used in games during halftime. The NFL has collected data on how varying conditions affect PSI level this season and is not releasing the results. So we want to do our own experiment just to say, hey, the NFL isn’t releasing the numbers, so we decided to try it out ourself and release our numbers. We won’t be proclaiming our results as the gospel truth, just that this experiment shows what we observed under similar conditions to the AFC championship game last year.

Please let me know if anyone in your department is interested. Feel free to call me at anytime if you have additional questions.

Thanks so much!
–
Kalyn Kahler
Editorial Assistant
Sports Illustrated | The Monday Morning Quarterback

Can you believe it’s the 1 year anniversary of Deflategate and we’re still talking about this shit?  We’re still talking about it a full year after this fraud story broke.  Sports Illustrated and Peter King who played a key role spreading lies and misinformation in real time just getting around to paying chemistry students at NC States 1,000 bucks just to rubber stamp some half assed experiment that they are doing just to give it credibility. (Sidenote I got an email 2 days ago saying Sports Illustrated planned on running a hatchet job against the Pats saying they got off on a technicality. I’m inclined to believe that at this point)

Hey can somebody tell Peter King that science has already spoken. As Dan Wetzel pointed out today Science has already destroyed Deflategate.

“As time has allowed more serious analysis to come in, the results have been an overwhelming destruction of the conclusions of Wells, Exponent and the consulting work of Princeton professor Daniel Marlow.

It’s been from all directions: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (multiple studies), Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Chicago, Boston College, the University of Nebraska, the University of Illinois, the University of New Hampshire, Bowdoin College, Rockefeller University, where a Noble Prize winner couldn’t have lampooned it more viciously, and so on and so on. Then there were unaffiliated retired scientists, climate experts, professional labs, even the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, which crushed the science of Wells’ report. A fourth-grader in Sacramento discredited it for her school science fair.”
.
Yet here we are still talking about Deflategte.  And to make matters worse supposedly Roger Goodell is threatening to release PSI numbers during Superbowl week from a season long investigation that may or may not have actually even taken place. Numbers that would surely be concocted to make Brady look bad. Numbers that would never see the light of day if they proved his innocence. Numbers that are surely designed to whip the media into a frenzy once again. Who cares that science has proven Brady was innocent? Who cares that Brady’s play since Deflategate has exonerated him? Who cares the NFL has lied, cheated and stolen every step of the way. Somehow we’re still talking about this a full year later. Somehow the NFL continues to make sure this is headline news. Roger Goodell won’t let this story die. Why? Because he can’t live in a world where truth and justice prevail. Where players have due cause. That’s why Goodell fights. Because he is a dictator who believes what he says goes whether it’s fair or not. That he is God and has to answer to nobody. It’s not about right and wrong. It hasn’t been about right and wrong for a long time. It’s about jealous vanquished rivals and Roger Goodell being allowed to act like Hitler and get away with it.