On October 11, Week 5 of the upcoming NFL season, the Patriots will play at the Cowboys for the first time in eight years. With the Patriots coming off their fourth Super Bowl of the millennium, and the Cowboys coming off arguably their best season in 19 years, it should be the premier game of the early season.
It could be the highest-rated game of any all season before the playoffs. Of course, Tom Brady might not play in it after his four-game suspension for the so-called Deflategate controversy was upheld by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
(This is despite, as of August 4, the NFL's own schedule website hyping up a Brady/Tony Romo battle on its Week 5 page.)
Let's switch gears for a second to who will be playing on the Cowboys after a suspension of the same length as Brady's after appeal, barring injury: Greg Hardy.
Yes, thanks to off-set bye weeks, the same Greg Hardy that threw his girlfriend onto a couch filled with assault rifles, strangled her, and threatened her to the extent that she "accepted at that point" that she would die, will play in the 2015 season in the NFL before Tom Brady.
You probably don't need to be reminded about all the fuzzy details about Deflategate because you've probably been beaten to death with ridiculous spin, things that may or may have not happened, or general scorching hot takes by seeing any amount of talking-head NFL coverage on various media over the offseason.
But let's get rid of the spin, and get down to the absolute bottom line that Ted Wells' investigative report, supposedly the most damning piece of evidence that doomed the Patriots and Brady to those harsh penalties. The Wells Report's grand conclusion was that the Patriots equipment staff "more likely than not" doctored the footballs in the January 18 AFC Championship Game, and that Brady was "generally aware" of that possibility.
There's no conclusive smoking gun, and pretty much every reputable scientific inquiry conducted into the matter has not only found massive flaws with the Wells Report, but has supported the Patriots' defense.
We're going to suspend a player for "general awareness" of something that is "more likely than not" to have happened, based on a highly flawed report, for the same number of games as abusive, violent, life-threatening actions that the victim testified to in court?
It's another chapter in the NFL's continued disgraceful behavior and incompetent management of a sport that already had enough issues.
And yes, I suppose there are semantics related to Hardy's suspension, like the fact that it was initially a 10-game ban, reduced by the fact that Hardy's violent act came in a pre-Ray Rice world when Goodell didn't have a revised player conduct policy at his disposal.
I'm not exactly going to pat anyone on the back or excuse anyone for that. The overarching optics of the situation are unacceptable, and seeing Hardy on a field trying to sack Jimmy Garoppolo on the second Sunday of October should raise a lot of protest. It might even keep some people from watching. It certainly gives the league another reputation hit.
And let's face it, these reputation hits are going to look minimal because TV ratings and league business are still booming.
The other day, I saw an insane fact that each NFL team was cut a check for more than $226 million based on revenue sharing (mostly from TV money) split 32 ways. That's about 1.6 times what the salary cap was. So, before any local deals or other revenue, sponsorships, etc., each team is pocketing tens of millions of dollars after paying its player salaries.
Why change your flawed way of enforcing the "integrity of the game" if your constituent parts are rolling in money? Because eventually, those things add up, even if all the current monetary signs don't indicate it.
If you don't think there are bigger warning signs for the NFL, you're really whistling past the graveyard. You must have missed the slew of younger players who retired in the offseason, some of them stars. And then, at the youth levels, there are big drops in participation levels.
And as a once-massive NFL fan, every one of these types of stories adds up.
While I can still watch college football from midday until the end of the 10 PM EST starts, I just don't care about the NFL like I once did. I'll watch my two favorite teams, the Broncos and the Panthers, but I won't watch 10-plus hours of coverage around the league on a Sunday and passionately follow my fantasy team.
As we go deeper into August, supposedly a graveyard of sports activity due to football starting up the next month, I'm looking forward to baseball pennant races and the start of European soccer season more than the NFL. I can't ever remember saying both of those things concurrently at any point in my life.
I no longer want to support a league that messes up in so many ways with a full day of my time. Sports is ultimately commerce and entertainment, and issues like the Brady/Hardy juxtaposition, among many others, have been pivotal in my fandom.
Of course, there is a chance Brady's suspension could get reduced in the actual judicial system. Even if it does, the damage in trust in the league will already been done.
August 10, 2015
Steve White:
I believe both the NFL and Tom Brady have mishandled the situation. We will likely never know the entire truth of what happened around deflated footballs. Brady made a huge error by having his phone destroyed. If he was not attempting to hide information why wreck the cell phone?
I view the NFL as more of a money making business than the national sport. Integrity of the game is less important than how much money is generated. The NFL knew about the severe hazards of head injuries long before they actually did anything to address it.
I was a rabid Steelers fan in the glory days of the 70’s when they won 4 Super Bowls. Those days are long gone. I still root for the Steelers but with less passion and interest. After all it’s more business than sport. The winners and losers still get their huge pay checks-much more than most working people.