For the past sixteen years the New England Patriots have been the best franchise in the league. Their team, spearheaded by five time Super Bowl champion and future hall of famer Tom Brady as well as methodical coach Bill Belichek, has a record of 208-61 with Brady at quarterback. No team has seen this much success under one player/coach combo in NFL history. Recently the organization has come under a lot of scrutiny over a situation that was tagged with the name “deflategate”. Deflategate is a situation that happened in the AFC championship against the Indianapolis Colts game in January of 2015. Tom Brady threw an interception and the defender who had the ball said it felt under inflated, this eventually spiraled to of control and resulted in a full fledged investigation into whether the footballs were inflated. After the investigation and court appeals the Patriots were stripped of their next first round draft pick and quarterback Tom Brady was given a hefty four game suspension. The inconsistencies in the court rulings as well as the ambiguous terms used in the investigation report is how the NFL mistreated the Patriots with their ruling. 

The reasoning behind the initial accusations is that Brady was trying to gain an advantage in the cold weather, with less inflated balls he would be able to grip it better which theoretically would help especially because it was raining that day. Sports science is a program that uses science to explain sports anomalies and figure out whether deflating the football gives you an actual advantage. John Brenkus says that you can only grip the ball better by 1 millimeter and the weight difference in the football is actually the same as the weight of a dollar bill. Even with a little extra grip, the ball actually travels slower than it would normally.(Brenkus) Also the temperature that day was near freezing and the ideal gas law states that gases contract in cold air.(Nocera) So the reported deflation would actually more likely be from an environmental doing not a person intentionally under deflating the footballs. When the balls were tested after the game the patriots balls had lower air pressure than the colts balls which did not look good for the patriots but after further research by a Professor John Leonard it seemed that the colts balls had warmed up after the game when being tested. The game was also a blowout, the final score being 45-7, no real advantage was gained from the allegedly deflated footballs and running back Legarrett Blount rushed for 148 yards and 3 touchdowns. So when you take away the passing aspect of the game you see a team looking for excuses. 

The actual indictment of the organization came from a report called the “Well’s Report”. Ted Wells was hired by the NFL to investigate the patriots organization after the initial  accusation that they had deflated footballs in the AFC championship game. The ensuing verdict and punishment by the league stems from the findings in the wells reports. The wells report is nearly 250 pages of witness interviews, league rules, analysis of events, and communications afterward. The entire report is written in hindsight weeks after the initial incident of deflated balls. The incriminating term at the end of the report is, “it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules” and later goes on to say, “ it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities” (Wells). The terms used are very ambiguous and does not at all sound confident in wrong doing from the investigators standpoint. Brady being “at least generally aware” and “more probable than not” that something bad or mischievous happened is a shocking revelation about our american system. That without hard proof and evidence someone can be indicted by possibly being generally aware of something that maybe happened is amazing. Obviously it does not involve jail time but the term innocent until proven guilty comes to mind and in this case Brady really wasn't proved guilty at all. 

The National Football League and Rodger Goodell have a history of mishandling investigations and giving questionable punishments. The NFL has to spend tens of millions of dollars to conduct investigations and deal with appeals when the most pressing issue in the sport isn't about how much air was in a football but concussions and head injuries. Instead of dealing with the main issues commissioner Rodger Goodell continues to show where his priorities lie. Sports lawyer Robert Boland discusses the issues in the NFL investigatory procedures in his article titled “Stop Digging:The Pitfalls of the NFL’s Investigatory Procedures”.   He says the league is inconsistent in its punishment between different cases and notes examples such as Ray Rice domestic abuse case. In the case of Ray Rice, a former all star running back for the Baltimore Ravens, a video surfaced of him hitting his girlfriend and dragging her unconscious body out of an elevator. Boland says, “The League’s handling of the Rice case created the perception that the League and its disciplinary policy were ill-equipped to deal with media criticism”. He was suspended two games for this and then it was made known that Goodell had already seen the video before and had kept it a secret. One of his best interests is the integrity of football which is challenged during high profile cases (Cole). Another example is the same situation as the patriots were in but a year later, The New York Giants reported to the league that the Pittsburg steelers were playing with under inflated footballs and Goodell initially denied the report and did require any sort of investigation or anything further on the matter (Reimer). It is apparent that Goodells best interests for the sport are a little off. Essentially they wasted time and money on on a litany of cases some being important and some being a touch out of proportion, especially deflate gate by not only mishandling it in the first place but also getting the outcome wrong. 

When Goodell first handed down his ruling to Brady he appealed the suspension in court and won. Zachary LeFluer published an article reviewing the case and says that there is an unfair arbitration decision under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) of NFL. The Judge ruled that Goodell’s suspension of Brady for four games violated the principles of fairness under the Federal Arbitration act. This is the first appeal of the punishment handed down from goodell and the judge says the suspension is based on legal deficiencies. Lafleur says that Goodell stepped over the line multiple times while acting as arbitrator in the Brady appeal. The investigation run by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP was seen by the judge to be less run by the investigators and more run by Goodell and his cabinet. Robert bland makes a great comparison saying, “just as it is inconsistent for the President of the United States to also be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court… it is also inconsistent for Roger Goodell, who is coincidentally the only non-lawyer among the four current major sports commissioners, to also operate as its chief prosecutor, chief judicial officer, and chief appellate judge”. It would help the league to have third party disciplinary standards because Goodell making all the decisions has proven to be inconsistent at best. From a moral standpoint should Ray Rice be given less of a punishment for more of a crime? Same goes for giants kicker Josh Brown who was suspended only one game for his domestic abuse, and Greg hardy Carolina Panthers defensive tackle who was given a suspension equal to Brady’s. The obvious answer is no. The flaws in the NFLs investigations and disciplinary rulings are detrimental to the sport and gives the league a bad image. 

The Patriots have been known to push the limit a little bit and try to see how far they can go without getting in trouble. In 2007 the Patriots were caught in the middle of another NFL disciplinary nightmare which was given the name Spygate. Spygate is where the new term deflategate stems from as well as another gate called bountygate involving the new orleans saints. In 2007 the Patriots were disciplined for videotaping an opposing teams defensive signals from a private location. The organization was fined over $750,000 and once again stripped of their first round draft picks. This is how the Patriots first got the stigma of being cheaters or bending the rules. If you were a football fan and indifferent towards the team at the time, you immediately didn't like them. The age old saying of cheaters never win didn't even apply to the situation because the Patriots went 18-1 that year and have made the playoffs in eight straight years which makes it that much worse. This is where the overall bias against the New England Patriots come from, if you aren't from there you don't like them and if you do then you aren't liked. 

The argument against the Patriots also seems sound on the outside. It usually is along the lines of the Patriots have cheated once and not surprising they get caught doing it again. When dealing with deflate gate and cheating it calls into question the ethics of sport. The book “Ethics and Sport” by MJ McNamee and SJ Parry attempts to bring clarity to right and wrong in sports. Essentially what it is saying is that this notion that there is a distinct right and wrong when dealing with a topic such as sports is I'm possible to say. Every person has a different way of looking at ethics because everyone has their own ethical code. Cei Tuxill and Shelia Wigmore’s view in the same book is that, “developing the idea that rule infections involve a failure of respect for persons by distinguishing between two forms of respect: ‘recognition’ respect and ‘appraisal’ respect.”. Essentially recognizing that a rule was broken is the first step in respecting the sport. One of the arguments is that Patriots organization has been caught cheating once before in 2007 and again in 2015 for deflategate. A lot of people think that had the patriots just recognized that they did something wrong that this case would not have lingered for almost two years. Mike McNamee says, “… an account of a particular virtue, trust, which illuminates certain characteristics of the virtuous agent.” A big part of deflate gate was the lack of trust with the patriots organization and coaches. Tom Brady at one of his press conferences about the deflation of the footballs denied any knowledge of the events which rubbed some people the wrong way such as former NFL quarterback and current football analyst Mark Brunell. After watching the press conference he got choked up on national television talking about Brady. Brunei said we was surprised at what Brady had to say,also saying, “I did not believe what Tom Brady had to say, those balls were deflated. Somebody had to do it. And I don’t believe there is an equipment manager in the NFL that would on his own initiative deflate a ball without the starting quarterback’s approval”. Brunei also said he was disappoint ted and wanted brady to stand up and take some of the blame and recognize his mistake. The integrity of the sport also comes into question when talking about cheating. Nancy Armour for USA Today said, “Cheating, no matter how silly or minor it seems, compromises the integrity of the game. If fans lose trust in the game or the people playing it, it makes the sport a farce…”. A lot of people who agree with the deflate gate penalties embrace a “they got what they deserved” attitude but the reality of it is that they punished someone with little to no evidence which was all circumstantial. 

There are a couple different stances on the topic of deflategate. One point of view is that the patriots have a history of cheating, in 2007 the patriots were indicted on charges of video taping opposing teams practices before important games. The patriots were found guilty of that so immediately when the story of the patriots deflating footballs came out its easy to hop on the bandwagon and agree that the Patriots once again cheated, but s more of the story came out there became some varying arguments. Some arguments are that the punishment was too harsh especially the second time around. After Brady initially appealed his four game suspension in court and won, so his suspension was gone and he was free to play all 16 games in 2015-2016, the next year it was taken back to court and this time upheld two years after the incident. The inconsistencies in the rulings is one thing to take notice of as well the fact that it was overturned from a court ruling in the first place shows that it had a shaky base to begin with. Along with the very ambiguous terms used in the Wells Report to suggest Tom Brady probably may have possibly known something about the balls being a little under deflated and the NFLs history of mishandling disciplines all point to the fact that the NFL mishandled and untimely mistreated the New England Patriots during deflategate.
