[tony20009]

Originally Posted by ska///235i

All QBs have break the rules on their balls...its 1 psi less not 15 lol

The Media made this into a world story.

Move on, the Pats has been cheating for the pass 11 years and ppl just found out? Comon!

TB is coming out this year with another great season fueled by all this nonsense...

Red:
Were there 15 fewer pounds in the ball, the quarterback would be throwing something more akin to a elliptical pancake than a ball of any sort.

That said, I'm hoping that your comment about the extent of the under inflation is but a poorly developed way of expressing that you think the minor amount of missing air pressure is such that folks should overlook the infraction. To that end, I agree it was a relatively minor the act, but it's a minor act that has the potential to have a major impact, at least according to at least one other professional quarterback ( (Former Colts QB Jack Trudeau on DeflateGate: 'You would know'). The bigger issue, in my mind at least for I didn't and don't care who won/wins a football game, is that it was an act perpetrated deliberately on the sly, as is steroid use and "secret shoes."

My beef isn't with how wily the perpetrators were, it's that they acted on their dishonorable ideas and that not one soul in the Patriots organization who wasn't involved, and who was in a position to have noticed, bothered to speak up. From what I can tell, any number of individuals, especially Mr. Brady, could have easily said, "Hey, this/these balls seems to have lost some air. Can we take a break to reinflate them?"

What the Patriots employees did was willful and intended to have an immediate and direct impact on a specific NFL game wherein Mr. Brady and the other New England team members stood to gain as a result. Moreover, the ball incident was one of collusion among several individuals. Lastly, the ball deflation/under inflation was an act that betrayed -- in fact and in appearance -- the trust others, the league managers, referees, legal book makers, and fans among others, had placed in the team and its members to conduct themselves in accordance with the stated rules of the game. A game, a thing upon which nothing of significance depends.

Blue:
And well that they did.

Ethics and Morals -- The Business of Football side:
Having and adhering to an honorable code of ethics and morals is free. Do we only learn right from wrong, only learn to eschew the appearance of impropriety in our actions, when we reach a certain income level? I have seen ample evidence from my experience mentoring low income young people (and interacting with their parents) that poverty is no impediment to one's knowing right from wrong. I suspect I'm not alone.

If there be a burden to bear, it's the one we as a society, as fans, have in in refusing to take such a callous attitude to what's wrong about the culture in which we live. The kind of low ethical standards shown by members of the Patriots organization will persist and spread as long as the rest of us simply accept it as "that's the way it is" rather that demanding that it when it is, it is reprehensible and will carry with it penalties commensurate with far more materially -- physically and/or monetarily serious infractions.

Why place such a high penalty on ethical/moral turpitude? Because the vast majority of wrong doing begins with flawed ethics and morals. When the impact of ignoring their ethics over small things is high, it stands to reason that the impact in circumstances of broader scope will be higher. Thus people become increasingly reticent about committing small infractions, and even more so re: larger ones.

I don't seriously think many people commit acts based on premeditated ethical/moral lapses. I think that what happens in most cases is that folks encounter "opportunities" whereby if they simply ignore their standards for that moment, they profit and "all will be well with the world," so to speak. Nobody will be the wiser, so why not? That is the thinking I feel takes place in folks' minds.

The problem with acts such as the ball deflation ones, is that unlike one's stealing a defined sum of money from me, or assaulting me, proving causality is very hard. Each of us is presumed to be on our best honor in situations like the Patriots' AFC Championship game. The problem with taking a light-handed penal approach as was taken with the Patriots is that it puts people in the position of evaluating the risk and penalty profile of any given act and determining what they'll forgo if they get caught.

In the case of the penalties assigned to Mr. Brady and the Patriots team, the penalties tacitly say that where cheating and its perpetrators is ambiguous and/or vaguely attributable re: what drove it to occur, the penalty, say, for the team is $1M. Now, as the owner of a $2.5B+ business, the obvious question is, "Can we afford to spend $1M if deflating a ball will allow us to win the AFC championship and necessarily yield the profits and benefits that come from having done so?" Now I don't know about you, but I doubt there is a $100M+ business on the planet that cannot afford to spend $1M in order to gain the opportunity to claim something close to $100M. (How Much Is Winning Super Bowl Worth? | ThePostGame -- even the speaker in that video refers to the profits as "icing," but make no mistake, $100M is "icing" any business owner will sooner take than let go, especially for a "measly" $1M...remember, we're talking about businesses, not individuals.)

Ethics and Morals -- The personal side:
I hold sports players (and teams) to a higher standard of ethics than I might, say, ostensibly reformed convicts. Well, actually, it's not that the standard of behavior is any higher, but rather what I feel justified in expecting that the standard be upheld by sports players vs. former convicts.

Why do I feel more rigid expectations are justified? Well, in large measure because every single NFL player is very well compensated. Even the lowest draft picks earn a very livable salary. I mean really, if one can't find a way to happily and honestly exist on $420K (NFL rookie contracts have become simpler, faster to sign after new CBA | The MMQB with Peter King) -- and that's up nearly $100K from 2010's $325K minimum (did anyone you know get ~$100K routine pay raise over the course of four years?) -- one has a very big problem. That folks earning the astronomical sums that Mr. Brady does would deign to allow so much as the appearance of having cheated mar their reputation is unconscionable and, quite frankly, pathetic. Indeed, if $420K/year to play a game (work) for approximately five months a year, to say nothing of millions per year, isn't enough to inspire one to behave with integrity, one doesn't deserve to play the game.
-- http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-sh...140800306.html
-- How to Become an NFL Player - An Interview with Duane Brown | The Art of Manliness
-- http://www.newsday.com/sports/footba...-nfl-1.9218497

Well, forgive me, but their work day doesn't seem any more onerous than that of a great many professionals who earn similar sums and have to work the same hours for all 12 months of the year. Ask your favorite auditor or tax accountant what their hours are like during "busy season." Even outside of "busy season," a 50-60 hour week isn't uncommon. The biggest difference, aside from the sheer quantity of hours, between pro sports players and professionals in other disciplines work schedules is that upon reaching the senior levels of a large partnership, one has considerably control and flexibility over how and when one uses ones time to get the work done than one has at lower levels. That said, partners/principals are owners, personally liable for their firm's success and failure, not employees, so that's not all that surprising. (There had better be more perqs to becoming a partner than just a higher income, otherwise why bother? LOL Most any partner is more than adequately qualified to find other work that pays equally well.)

All the best.