This is the part where one lowly football writer says, “No more.” This is the time when sportsnet.ca’s NFL editor rises up against the tyranny of Hot Takes on the reports that the New England Patriots were caught using deflated balls during the AFC Championship game and screams from the digital rooftops, “Who cares?”
This is the rant you send to whomever you know who has worked themselves into a lather over what essentially amounts to missing air.
Chill out. It changes nothing.
You might be a Patriots hater, and upset that this team is able to seemingly bend the rules and keep itself atop of the NFL heap through sheer trickery. You might be a Patriots fan, angry that your coach has once again allegedly overshadowed his team’s superlative on-field play with his sinister skullduggery.
You might be just a poor, tired, beleaguered football fan, who has spent a full season now — literally from beginning to (almost) end — talking about off-field scandal and front-office sideshows instead of the game that you love.
You might just be a columnist somewhere who is grateful for the story to fill space in an often boring week before the week before the Super Bowl.
If you are any of these people, I empathize and understand. But also, it doesn’t matter. The #DeflateGate Scandal, as it has been dubbed, did not change the outcome of an important game in any perceptible way, nor does it tell you anything about any party involved that you did not already know.
Was every football inflated to the exact same degree, would the Colts have won the AFC Championship? Let’s let Colts TE Dwayne Allen answer that one himself. Take it away, Dwayne:
Yep. That’s about right.
Did it take this scandal to convince you that Bill Belichick was an evil genius who would stoop to whatever degree he thought necessary to secure a win?
It probably shouldn’t have, since that’s happened before — and not just with Spygate, the last Patriots “-gate” that proved the levels to which he would descend if he deemed it possible. Belichick also routinely lists, like, half of his players on the injury report every week, and makes a mockery of the local media’s attempt to get him to tell the truth about his team.
Again, none of these things are illegal, at all — except by NFL rules — they just illustrate the character of a man who has a singular focus: Achieving victory for the New England Patriots. Everything else — the normal standards of football decency, character questions, NFL protocol — is secondary.
So yeah, no shocker.
Did it also take this scandal — and the fine and draft pick penalty likely to be handed out if the NFL concludes the Patriots cheated — to convince you that Roger Goodell is reacting far more than acting? That he is a man desperately trying to maintain some semblance of order as he governs a league that seems to sprout two fires for every one he somehow manages to extinguish? Had you completely forgotten the events of, oh, about four months ago?
Did it also shock you that fans of a team will find ways to excuse their misdeeds? Or that fans of teams who have lost to that team will find ways to disparage or even disqualify their victories?
Really? It did? Then you must also be shocked to have learned, like, a few days ago, that football causes concussions. Welcome to 2015. Happy new year.
It’s the ultimate tempest in a teapot. A seemingly big story with very little real impact that occurs in eye of the sports world’s biggest media hurricane.
The bottom line here is context. In the context of the larger and much more serious issues the league as a whole has faced this year; in the context of Belichick’s lengthy history of doing anything within his power to get the all-important ‘W’; in context of Goodell’s failure to enforce a consistent level of discipline; and in, most importantly, the overall context of the actual game on the field, which ended 45-to-freaking-7…who cares?
So why write this story? Because some people need to let things go. Because sometimes the sports world needs a cold take.