Come On, Fran, It's Due Process AND Evidence

You could not have missed the fact that last week, the New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady was dramatically un-suspended in a court of law, after the NFL had imposed a four-game suspension on him for "probable knowledge" of equipment men deflating game footballs, some to below NFL minimum pressures.

I wrote what I would like to think are all that need to be written on this subject, here and here, but apparently not everyone actually reads it.  Imagine that.

So last week, along comes an interview with Hall of Fame quarterback Fran Tarkenton (and Geraldo Rivera, for good measure), in regard to this matter.  Needless to say, Fran, whom I watched as a player back 40 years ago, came down squarely on the side of the NFL in all that.  As the title says, Tarkenton says "Brady knew."

So I haul myself back up to a sitting position, apply fingers to keyboard and ask the esteemed Mr. Tarkenton the $64,000 question.

"Brady knew precisely what?"

And there, Fran and friends, is why I have such a problem with these interviews of famous people who may understand the physical process but not the legal one.  Tarkenton hearkened back to his days as a quarterback and noted that as such, he told the equipment guys how he wanted the footballs slicked down, or whatever.  And I believe him.

I believe him when he says that Brady dictated to the equipment men how he liked the pressure to be in the game footballs.  Aaron Rodgers said the same thing, and I'll bet pretty much every quarterback in the past 50 years has done the same thing (told the equipment men his preferences).

But the part that Mr. Tarkenton completely misses in his knee-jerk loyalty to the Commissioner and the NFL, is that from a legal, moral and ethical perspective, there is a 100-yard gulf between telling the equipment guys you prefer the ball to be softer and less inflated, and that you want the ball to be deflated below the NFL legal minimum.

The former is an expressed preference, and a qualitative thing; the latter is a specific instruction to violate league rules.  In the entirety of the investigator's report, there is not one single instance anywhere -- and I read the whole bloody thing -- where Tom Brady asked or suggested or hinted to the equipment men or anyone else, that they should deflate footballs below the NFL limit -- or even that he wanted them deflated that far.

There are precisely two incidents in the report where Brady did, in fact, mention desired pressures, on two separate occasions.  In both cases, the specific pressures expressed by Brady as preferences or as directives were within the NFL limit.  So we have actual evidence of numeric pressures asked for by Brady -- and both were legal.

How many times in that report does Brady say or do anything to indicate directly or indirectly to the equipment men that he wants footballs below the legal 12.5 PSI?  You can guess the answer, but it's pretty evident:

Zero.

I think Fran Tarkenton is a pretty sharp guy, but he should know better than to state that a punishment of any kind, for any reason, should be levied by the NFL completely absent evidence that the offense ever took place.  As I've written before, it is perfectly legal to deflate footballs.  It is not legal to deflate them below 12.5 PSI, and while there is plenty of direct evidence and suggestion that Brady asked for the footballs to be deflated, there is none at all suggesting that he asked for them to be illegally deflated (and at least some that he didn't want them illegally deflated.

In so many of these cases we get lost in the weeds, and go off on tangents to avoid the obvious (q.v. the Hillary Clinton "Just ask why she had a private server in the first place; forget all the rest" thing).  This one is so simple.

No evidence of wrongdoing, and evidence of not wanting wrongdoing.  The NFL was wrong, and so is Fran Tarkenton.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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