A Few Thoughts On the Deflategate Verdict

No. Just no.

1. Roger Goodell will almost certainly be fired. He had one job - keep things good for the owners - and he failed. He alienated his biggest supporter, embarassed the league, and hurt the brand. Someone more pliable and less addicted to the limelight will be filling his chair shortly.

Things to Remember About DeflateGate

In No Particular Order:

Touchy About Feeley

You can pretty much anticipate the reaction of sports fans to any piece of news to come down the pike. At this point, the data set is large enough and the behaviors visible enough that you can generally skip the story and already know what the comments sections are going to be like.

The Sounds of Deflategate's Aftermath

The following are the sounds of the Tom Brady suspension:

(Brady, for those of you living on Mars, has been suspended for four games next season for his role in "Deflategate". In addition, the New England Patriots have been fined a million dollars and stripped of two draft picks, a #1 in 2016 and a #4 in 2017. And the two Patriots employees who carried out the nefarious plan have been suspended indefinitely without pay, but they don't actually play football so nobody appears to care about them. But I digress.)

"IT'S NOT FAIR THE LEAGUE HAS IT OUT FOR US BECAUSE WE'RE SO AWESOME" - The sound of the New England Patriots fan, who is constitutionally incapable of admitting that Tom Terrific or indeed any of his heroes could ever possibly conceive of ever possibly doing any possible thing ever wrong - unlike those mooks who play for the Jets, who are just the scum of the Earth. Until they come play for the Patriots, at which point they're awesome. Until they leave to go back to play for the Jets again.

UnBradyed

The Broncos' deconstruction of the Patriots yesterday hinged on precisely two factors. One was the complete inability of the Patriots pass rush to even ruffle Peyton Manning's thinning hair. (Seriously. Paint the guy green and he's the spitting image of The Leader from the old Hulk comics.) The other was Tom Brady.

Dumb Things Overheard On The Radio

"If Payton Manning loses this game, I will no longer consider him the best quarterback of all time. Right now, it's Manning 1, Namath 2, and Brady 3" - spoken by a local sports talk radio host in all seriousness

Seriously.