Brady Redux

There is something the average fan, and maybe even the learned sports writer, does not know. There must be.

The Brady saga continues.  Today a tribunal reversed Judge Richard Berman's decision and reinstated Tom Brady's four game suspension for allegedly tampering with footballs.  The majority argument, (there was a dissenter) had nothing to do with the facts of the deflation, but rather the right of the NFL to render a punishment under the collective bargaining agreement.

Berman's decision at the end of the summer was based on his perspective that the NFL had been capricious and sloppy in its findings which served as the foundation for the suspension. And, he reasoned, while the NFL has the right to punish they do not have the right to do so irresponsibly. Apparently the judges who opined in favor of the NFL today felt that either the foundation of the report was solid or the NFL had the right to be capricious if they wanted to be.

There is a big piece that has to be missing.  A very big piece.

If Tom Brady was certain of his innocence and the Patriots were similarly certain, they would and should scream bloody murder after all this time.  As I read through the findings of the NFL report there is nothing, nada, borscht, that comes any where close to proving that Brady was behind the deflation--nothing even to prove categorically that the balls were deflated.

But I am hoping that there must be something. Because otherwise, if there is no evidence, then the NFL is being run by a moron who will get his ass sued to such an extent that there will be no more NFL.  After all this time, Goodell would have to realize--even though I believe he is not the swiftest, and also believe that if it were not for his Dad, he would be a struggling nobody--that the NFL should give it up if there is no evidence.

And, also, if there is no evidence where has the Patriots' stones gone.  Are you going to take this abuse for over a year now if you are innocent.  It makes no sense that you would.  You played nice and you get this and you did nothing. You would bring out the lawyers.

So, I think something big, as in very big, has been withheld from the public. Either that or within a week Tom Brady and the Patriots will bring the NFL to its knees with a law suit.

I would love it if some reader can read the NFL report and show me something I missed that will indicate that Tom Brady instructed someone to break the rules and deflate the footballs.  When I go through it, I see nothing that would cause a dispassionate arbiter to suspend a marquis player at all let alone four games.

So, I think there must be something.