As mentioned in the other thread, it's this or some inane sob story about a player. Remember last year was two weeks about Richard Sherman. Two fucking weeks about him being excited and scaring white people. Calling this "cheating" is something that needs to be thought about, it really is more a preferred double edged sword. Deflated ball pro: can be thrown and caught easier. Con: Velocity is taken off the ball as it isn't spiraling, resulting in passes being short or behind the receiver. As you saw Edelman and Vereen had to turn around and catch 2-3 passes that looked like ducks. The balls were relatively wobbly and few were bullet style passes. If you're the defense and you see that, jumping routes because WAY more successful. The throws were constantly behind the receiver. On the other hand, Indy had their footballs just the way they wanted them, legally. No excuse for them to only put up 7 points. Also, anyone click on that Eli article? "“No one is allowed to touch those balls. They’re precious jewels. Too much work has gone into them.” That writer smiled when he got that quote. Also, fuck the superstitious shit. It's ridiculous. No other sport gets to do this stuff. They should be able to play with the regulation ball. If they can't make throws and perform with a regulation ball, then something needs to change. I find it silly completely. Basketball players don't get to pick their own balls, even for free throws. Crown, for the record, most bonuses are tied to stats. Post season bonuses are really not that exciting (few exceed 6 digits). Now they get negotiation leverage in the future, but a lot of these guys want to be remembered more than anything else. They want to know their effort mattered. No one remembers losers, they remember great players and SB winners.
Right, cause guys who take pay cuts towards the end of their career to play on a good team only want a $25K victory bonus. Or the guys who stick it out on the end of benches in the NBA on good teams when they could make more playing in Europe. There are plenty of sacrifices you make for the love of the game before money ever gets involved. I won't even bring up NHL players cause I know you beaver fuckers love segregating them from the rest of American professional athletes despite the fact that they are also all filthy rich.
I suspect the real reason the NFL lets the teams pick their own balls is to give the quarterback as much of an advantage as they can because passing offense puts as assess in the seats. They have to put some limits on it to keep at least a little integrity, but for the last decade or so, what's been good for the quarterbacks has been good for the league.
Pro sports has ALWAYS been about money. That's not new. That's why pro sports are. Original owners said, hey, these guys are good, I'll pay them to play for me so I can make some money off people watching them. I love sports: playing, watching and all that makes it exciting. Sometimes people cheat. In life and sports. Playing sports is about that stupid sucky round of goddamn golf I'm never playing again GAH moment that gets turned around because you knocked one stiff on 17. Watching sports is about that moment when "your team" improbably catches a 1-second left field goal that falls short and gets run back for 109 yard touchdown. Or, when slower than slow Sid Bream barely slides in ahead of Barry Bonds' rag arm throw from unknown pinch hitter Cabrera's single and some random lady in the stands hugs you even though you've never met before. Or, no! David Tyree did NOT just catch that ball against his helmet. I could care less if somebody made a dollar off those moments in the moment. Sports are the best reality programming there is, because when you think you've seen it all, you haven't. There's a thread that runs through the fabric of sports that is visceral and passionate. And, when somebody does something wrong or the implication of wrong, the public reacts emotionally. It's like the stupid things you do when you're in love. Good luck trying to quantify all that with logic.
This type of thing is nothing new to football or any other sport. I remember hearing about NASCAR drivers running fuel lines through out the roll cage of their cars to carry a little more fuel. Oscar Pistorious removed his legs to get lighter and run faster (not sure if that is 100% accurate) cork bats, illegal but effective if you're not caught, steroids, EPO. There are penalties if you get caught and each person who bends the rules takes that risk.
I highly recommend Marc Donahue's book, The Unfair Advantage. It's about racing, specifically how he and this guy named Roger Penske got into racing, but will be enjoyed by anyone who likes competition of any kind. The stories of them finding and exploiting loopholes in early NASCAR rules is incredibly entertaining. Their philosophy was that everyone will have the same skill and technical abilities to build a car, so their "unfair advantage" was in finding ways of gaining an advantage by doing things that the others didn't think of, but were still, technically within the rules. For instance, refuelling their car. The rules said that they had a specific number of gallons that had to flow through a specific nozzle into the car. No problem. One race weekend, during practice, they used the standard refuelling rig that everyone else was using, but when race day came, they built out a 50' tower with their fuel rig on top of it. Donahue was an engineer first and a driver second, so he understood head pressure. They now had 50' of head pressure powering their fuel into the car and gaining them 5-6 seconds during each pit stop for the entire race. Those other teams all screamed bloody murder, but the rules didn't say they couldn't do it, until the next race, when NASCAR had tech specs on the height of their refuelling rig. But for that weekend they had their unfair advantage that won them the race. Another such "unfair advantage" was them super-cooling the fuel, making it denser, so they could fit more fuel in their car at one time, thereby eliminating a pit stop from the overall race. Well, they just "super-loaded" their car with super-dense/cold gas, went back out, and then a huge wreck happened with some other cars. The yellow flags came out, and everyone slowed down. At that point the super-cold and dense gas in the car started to warm up... and expand, and it wasn't being used as fast as they were expecting (due to the yellow flags). They had very carefully calculated the expansion of the gas and matched it with the rate at which it was being consumed, at normal race pace. They were now idling around the track instead of having it floored, which meant the fuel system was drastically over-pressurizing, causing it to almost rupture, much like a fuel-based pressure cooker. The next race, NASCAR then had a "fuel temp" clause in the rules. And on and on. It was constant cat and mouse between the teams and the technical rule makers at NASCAR. Again, it's a very enjoyable read, even if you're not into racing.
Smokey Yunick would install reverse rotation cams and and flip the rearends in cars so that when the motor torqued over it would plant the outside right tire instead of lift it like conventional rotation motors do. He was also a big fan of making NASCAR write new rules.
This is a great article. Brady, Belichick, and Great Balls of Fire: A Front-Row Seat for the Foxborough Farce
It's only cheating if you get caught. Whether it's receivers using crazy stickum-like gloves, linemen using silicone spray on their jerseys, or players coating themselves in vaseline, there's always going to be people who push the boundaries.
Who the fuck hires these people? From this idiotic article: I love how she says at a minimum as if the most reasonable response would be to execute half the team or something. Umm yeah, it does matter because that is a full on ass kicking. Also, it should be pointed out that while it wasn't especially cold on game day if the pats had the balls deflated to the minimum allowed and they then sat outside that could possibly account for all the pressure difference. Maybe not, I'm not sure if it was cold enough. Either way I don't really give a fuck. I just wish media outlets would fire people for writing up such stupid shit.
They're acting like children... and throwing tantrums in the hopes that you'll pay attention to them. You can almost imagine them stamping their feet and pouting while they say that shit. Who fucking cares... just ignore them and carry on as normal.
According to the article she's was a vice president of some sort at ESPN. Dear lord I hate the outrage media. The worst part is the without question assertion that it HAD to be known cheating on the part of the Pats. Nothing else computes for her. At least the NFL is doing the most reasonable thing at this point saying it won't comment on anything until after their investigation.
Well you knew this was coming. SNL uhm, tackled, the subject, and they predictably did an awesome job: