Again, how that was relevant to an alleged scheme to under-inflate footballs was not clear. Indeed, those text messages would tend to deflate the "Deflategate" conspiracy theory because -- if the deflation scheme had predated the AFC Championship game -- you would have assumed that Jastremski would have chastised McNally for failing to ensure that the balls were under-inflated, rather than allow them to be over-inflated. Yet, there was no such discussion.
But the underlying absurdity of the NFL's conspiracy theory is revealed by the chronology of events on Jan. 18, 2015, which Goodell indicated was the one time when McNally took footballs unattended to the field. But Goodell didn't say why that was allowed -- and therein lay the weakness of the NFL's case.
The reason that McNally was able to carry the balls without an official accompanying him was because the NFC Championship game had gone into overtime and the NFL thus postponed the start of the AFC Championship game so the entirety of both games could be shown on TV.
When the NFC game ended in a sudden-death score by the Seattle Seahawks, there was haste and confusion in the referee lounge about getting everything needed down to the Patriots' field so the AFC game could commence. McNally said he thought he was just doing his part by carrying the bags of game balls down to the field rather than waiting to be escorted.
So, while McNally's explanation made sense -- as did his reason for ducking into a bathroom -- the NFL's conspiracy theory rested on the notion that somehow Brady, Jastremski and McNally had anticipated the NFC game would go into overtime, realized that would cause a delay in the start of the AFC game, and knew there would be confusion among the officials once the NFC game ended so McNally could sneak the footballs into a bathroom and release very small amounts of air.
That Brady and his "co-conspirators" would have anticipated that extremely unlikely scenario makes no sense. Nor did the supposed motive for going to all that trouble to gain some hard-to-explain advantage of having the Patriots footballs made a tiny bit softer and a tiny bit slower.
The Real Conspiracy
But there does seem to be a real conspiracy in this story, just not the one that the NFL dreamt up. Rather than let the whole ridiculous matter drop or acknowledge that the evidence was too weak to judge Brady guilty, the other NFL owners saw an opportunity to hobble the Patriots and thus give their own teams a competitive edge over a powerful rival.
While serving as the supposedly impartial arbiter hearing Brady's NFL appeal of his four-game suspension, Goodell allowed the owners of other teams to weigh in regarding how he should view the evidence of the case, according to his own admission.
In his ruling against Brady, Goodell disclosed that the Management Council, consisting of some of the league's most powerful owners, urged him to view the absence of the two locker-room employees at the appeal hearing as proof of Brady's guilt (even though the employees had testified repeatedly in other venues and had consistently denied tampering with the game balls).
It might be noted here that the Management Council controls Goodell's $35 million salary.
Occasionally, too, this interference by the rival owners has snuck into media accounts. ESPN beat reporter Mike Reiss included one item deep inside a notebook-style report that Goodell might want to finally drop the matter except that his hands had been tied by the rival owners.
"I think Goodell would do it if that's what 31 other ownership groups wanted, but it was clear as a possible settlement was recently explored behind the scenes that the majority of owners want the full penalty for Brady and the Patriots. Goodell is following their lead," Reiss reported.
In other words, Goodell's claim that he is protecting the "integrity of the game" by punishing Brady and the Patriots is hypocritical at best. In reality, he appears to be violating the integrity of the game by using a bizarre conspiracy theory to reduce the competitiveness of one dominant team.
Though normally I cover government-related topics, one reason that I have written about this case is because I have seen this pattern repeat itself again and again. When a powerful entity wants to impose its judgment on a weaker one, the powerful entity -- often relying on clever lawyers and exploiting media allies -- almost always carries the day.
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