Last year during this, the week before the week before the Super Bowl, the media was up in arms about Richard Sherman's heated postgame comments. The word 'thug' was said 625 times the following Monday on television, many more on print and over the airwaves. Richard Sherman had no respect, he was a disgrace to the NFL's image, and he was bad role model.
It was Sherman himself, with a Sports Illustrated written piece and a press conference the following Wednesday, who helped change the national conversation with his remarks that a white player would never be so viciously labeled as an 'unsportsmanlike thug' for having similar emotions, his example was fighting in hockey. This really struck a chord of truth with people and helped reverse the outraged sports media's witch-hunt for the 'ungrateful, unsportsmanlike thug' who should have 'won with class' into an interesting discussion of race perceptions in sports.
The Patriots aren't being called 'thugs', they are being called 'cheaters'. The same frenzy is on, and they can't get out of it. The media is at a frothing point. We are talking about slightly deflated balls in a 45-7 blowout like it's the end of the world. It's the spirt of this week, the week before the week before the Super Bowl. It's a perfect storm of massive Super Bowl hype but without any Super Bowl events until the following week. It's the beginning of the most sensationalized event in America. Actually, it's the beginning of the sensationalizing but not the beginning of the actual event. Some strange stories have filled this vacuum. This year, it's Deflate-Gate.
And that's from the big boys, the big sports media outlets. Lord knows what the thousands of little, free-wheelin', plebeian bloggers like me are saying.
The week before the week before the Super Bowl has always been sports media's finest hour in terms of annoyingly blowing things out of proportion. But it has been much worse in the last four or five years with Twitter and the NFL's new 'no-I-found-out-first' media culture of Adam Shefters and Mike Florios and the legions of idiots tweeting everything every source has ever said ever.
Last year we all talked Sherman, this year we all talk deflated balls.
Seriously, deflated balls! Has everyone gone insane?
We, the average football fan, should not be made to care about under or over inflated footballs. We should be talking about Seattle's comeback and New England's blowout of Andrew Luck.
If an investigation comes out and informs us how the Patriots cheated, we can note that, so be it, we kind of suspected it anyway, now they will be punished and we can move on. It's the referees and the NFL's job to keep that under control, so let's let them do that. If the Patriots are deflating balls, reinflate the damn balls! When did we turn into little babies who can't stand the idea of someone doing something bad? There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in the NFL every season, people are bending rules. That's why they have other people paid to enforce the rules.
If a ball boy is caught deflating, punish him, fire him, remove a draft pick from the team, and enforce the rule. That's that. We don't have to spin around with our hands in the air scoffing at the audacity of the Patriots and lamenting the way the world used to be! It's not the end of the world, it's just the NFL enforcing a relatively small rule. If they do it again, remove another draft pick, fine them 10 million dollars whatever! Eventually they won't be deflating balls anymore. There you go.
If all this hoop-la and crying and integrity talk had come out after an NFL investigation, I still would say we are overreacting, but let's consider that all this coverage has come before the NFL investigation has been released! We don't actually know who did it, when, where, or how! Nobody has been officially accused of deflating balls, we just know they were deflated.
Here's how the game day situation with the balls works:
The Patriots give their 12 game balls -that they've been allowed to break in all week during practice- to the referees a few hours before the game for inspection. They receive them back 15 minutes prior to the game. If the referees actually did their PSI inspection, and the NFL says they did, all the balls should have been properly inflated 15 minutes prior to the game.
That means 11 of 12 balls were deflated in that 15 minutes or during the first half. Who did it? When and how? Why can't we just let the NFL investigate and report back before we go off the damn rails. Even then, we don't need to devolve into this absolute insanity. If they report back they don't know who deflated 11 balls on the sideline during a nationally-televised, NFL-film-documented AFC Championship... then so be it.
ESPN, among others, has been reckless in their reporting. To the point that Fat Jerome Bettis, Brian Dawkins and Mark "The Crying Face Of The Jaguars" Brunell were given a full 10 minutes after Tom Brady's press conference today to call him a liar without needing one single fact. They just knew "from their own experience" that he was.
Fat Jerome Bettis repeatedly commented that this was not a big deal until Tom Brady lied. That's right, Jerome Bettis sitting in on the 72nd straight hour of ESPN Deflategate Coverage, with a MASSIVE Deflategate Graphic floating behind him, said that this wasn't a big deal "until now". That is the kind of insanity we are dealing with here!
Since Tom Brady and Bill Belicheck couldn't turn the conversation like Richard Sherman did, I am putting out a plea for sanity; Can we please just let the investigation report back, acknowledge the punishment or lack thereof, make sure to measure the PSI at the Super Bowl, and move on? No grandiose discussion about how Belicheck and Brady have destroyed the principles of the American Dream, let's just play the Super Bowl.
So now I've vented. I'm sorry I haven't talked at all about football today. I am going to do be doing four other blogs before the game, I promise those will be Seahawk related.
It's just that I've been worked up from listening to our own callers on the radio calling the Patriots cheaters, honestly stating they believe the Colts should play in the Super Bowl because of this! I've been watching ESPN, and reading articles on SI and even CNN about shame, loss of NFL's integrity, no- the loss of our national innocence and it's driven me insane. Yet I can't look away, it's just the lure of the week before the week before the Super Bowl. It gets me every time.
Next week, I hope to hear about and write about Tom Brady -vs- Russell Wilson, Beast Mode against Big Wilfork, Kam Chancellor hitting Rob Gronkowski, Richard Sherman -vs- Darelle Revis, Pete Carrol and Bill Belicheck. This game is an amazing matchup, we should start talking about it!
SIDE NOTE: Does anyone know why we add 'gate' to everything controversial? I mean, Watergate wasn't a controversy about Water it was the name of a hotel. Why do we add the 'gate' to things now? Such a weird quirk of our culture... but I suppose that's for another blog.
-miles.
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