LETTING THE AIR OUT OF ‘DEFLATEGATE’? Patriots 1, Detractors 0
For all those frothing, hair-trigger lynch-mobbers outside New England who love to hate on the Patriots, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, this Wednesday’s revelations in the so-called “Deflategate” controversy are yet another cold slap of reality that you and your teams are in fact simply inferior. Get used to being from Loserville, because our team and organization are better than yours. Period. Fact.
The bloviating New York media can trumpet their loser cries of “Hail To The Cheats”, as they did the morning after the Patriots defeated the Seahawks to win their 4th Superbowl title, all of them in the fabled Brady/Belichick era. But all that pitiful bleating only confirmed their collective ignorance and desperate grasping at any shred of evidence that the Patriots aren’t in fact the legitimate champions and the model franchise in today’s NFL. The similarities to the 1600’s Salem Witch Trials and their lack of evidence at that time are not lost on this region’s collective sense of history.
When you’re the best, everyone is gunning for you. When that dominance is perennial, the have-nots adopt the mindset that you must be doing something illicit to sustain it. This seemed to be the hope of all outside New England when football pressures became a curious issue after the AFC championship game. Bereft of facts, the haters far and wide launched themselves prematurely into paroxysms of invective aimed at Brady, who redeemed a shaky start this season and parlayed it into another world championship, cementing his legacy as arguably the best ever to play quarterback. More especially, fans of other teams directed open hatred towards Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, whom they seem to view as some kind of arrogant, evil shaman of football. The Patriots are, after all, serial cheaters who never win fair. Just ask Marshall Faulk.
Even NFL league officials were jumping into the breach to offer negative and incriminating opinions regarding the Patriots’ winning ways, and it may ultimately come out that league V.P. of game operations Mike Kensil, formerly with the Jets organization, has made it his special focus to find a way to discredit Robert Kraft’s franchise.
League commissioner and sheriff Roger “Tin Star” Goodell was all poised to “get to the bottom” of this scandal and nail the Patriots’ arrogant hide to the barn door as an example of the NFL’s moral turpitude, so vividly on display through its “handling” of the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson debacles. But rather than have aspersions darken the locker room in Foxboro, Massachusetts, it seems the league has yet another scandal on its own hands that was being fobbed off on the Patriots.
The investigation this week seemed to point to a Patriots part-time employee Jim McNally, who serves as the officials’ dressing room attendant at home games. McNally is accused by ESPN reporter Kelli Naqi of “attempting to introduce” an unapproved kicking ball into the AFC championship game. The ball was rejected by Alternate official Greg Yette, who brought it to Kensil’s attention.
Only hours later, Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted out that the unapproved ball McNally “attempted to introduce” into the game was handed to him by another NFL official for that purpose, and further investigation uncovered a minor scandal among the NFL’s personnel, not the Patriots‘. Seems the league supports a charity through the selling of official balls used during the games, and one of the officials handling this was slipping extra, unapproved balls into the game and then selling them on the side for profit. He has since been fired.
So no, the Patriots did not cheat their way to a championship. They legitimately beat quality opponents every step of the way to the Lombardi trophy. Those are the facts, and they will be confirmed by the Wells report whenever it finally comes out. As for commissioner Roger Goodell, what is the league getting in exchange for his $45-million salary each year, besides incompetence, public relations black eyes and the besmirching of legitimate champions?
And one final thought for all you bloggerheads banging out lines of Patriot hatred on sports websites; for all you who willfully ignore facts in order to embrace what you want to be true……things are quite cozy here in Titletown, where legends are made.
Image; https://www.flickr.com/photos/armydre2008/16350680255/
