It’s all about the money these days. Deflategate has been heard around the nation, and Pats fans are sick of it. With a 16 percent difference of inflation it shouldn’t be a big deal, right? But the NFL wants a story they can profit off of.
Currently Tom Brady’s jerseys are the best selling item on Fanatics.com, NFLShop.com and the Patriots official website according to NFL.com.
When looking at how the jersey sales have soared, it’s clear that the suspension Brady took was not because the NFL thought the punishment fit the crime, rather it was another economic opportunity for the league.
The NFL saw a huge upside in scheduling Brady’s return for the Patriots’ October Sunday Night Football game in Indianapolis on NBC. The primetime game has the potential to be the highest watched regular season game in NFL history; the team that reported Deflategate versus the “deflators.”
On top of soaring jersey sales and the October primetime game, the NFL made the Patriots pay one million dollars in fines for their part in Deflategate. Was all this punishment deserved for the Patriots? Of course not, it was a chance for the NFL to economically capitalize, and redo their heinous image among the sports world.
Since September 2014, when Ray Rice was suspended for two games for hitting his wife in an Atlantic City hotel, the NFL has been chastised in every way possible. This standard set by the NFL showed in their eyes, domestic abuse is not as punishable as deflating footballs.
The NFL is on a mission to please fans of the NFL’s 31 other teams who hate the Patriots for essentially being the Yankees of the NFL, and to re-establish an image as hardline rule-enforcers. But, Deflategate is not the way to restore the NFL’s integrity.
With the Wells Report full of terms such as “generally aware” and “probably” the NFL shows a report lacking conclusive hardcore evidence in order to prove the event occurred. Not only is Deflategate an overhyped story, but the history of ball tampering in the NFL, even when proven, has been well documented, and has gone completely unpunished.
In Super Bowl XXXVII, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers starting quarterback at the time, Brad Johnson, recently admitted to reporters in 2012 at a player alumni event that he paid the ball boys a total of 7,500 dollars to set game balls to his specifications, according to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. Johnson led the Bucs to a 48-21 win over the Oakland Raiders and no punishment was levied.
On January 20, Green Bay Packers quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, admitted to over-inflating balls passed the league limit to ESPN Milwaukee.
In an interview with CBS’s Phil Simms, Rodgers said, “I like to push the limit to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they allow you to do.” Again, no punishment.
NFL is placing a hefty punishment in order to set a standard based off a report with no conclusive evidence. This incident would’ve been swept under the rug if this was a mediocre team such as the Jacksonville Jaguarsww. But Deflategate isn’t about what is fair, it’s about what can make money and please the NFL executives.
