Dirty Laundry
There is a lot of flak going on around the New England Patriots and the buzz about the football deflation scandal is overwhelming what should be the lead up to the National Football League’s finest moment of the season, the 49th playing of their larger than life championship game, the Super Bowl.
This should be a two week celebration of the sport and the excellence of the two teams that have survived a grueling 16 game schedule and a couple of playoff games each to get to this championship game. But instead, there is a cloud hanging over the game. A cloud hanging over the sport in fact, for there is the perception that one of the teams had to bend the rules, to “cheat,” so to speak, to get to this point.
Whether one is a New England Patriot fan or not, that perception of unfair play is absolutely on the minds of the national audience, and pointed directly at the NFL. It’s as if Commissioner Roger Goodell had a big, splotchy grape stain on his shirt, and even as he was trying to talk at press conferences and pump up the big game, all anyone in the audience could do was to just stare at that stain on his shirt. Someone needs to tell the NFL and its commissioner that he needs to admit they have that stain on that shirt, and to then, change that shirt and wear something else that does not have a stain.
Here’s the problem. Why doesn’t the NFL admit THEY are wrong for their having a policy that allows for one team to have that capability of manipulating both the rules and the process to give THEIR team an unfair advantage? Throughout the history of sports, whenever players or teams have been allowed a loophole in the rules or the regulations, they have pounced upon every opportunity they could to gain themselves an advantage over their opponents.
When Major League Baseball had rules that allowed for pitchers to spit on or scuff up baseballs to give them an unfair advantage over batters, those pitchers sure as hell bent those rules to do whatever they could to help them “cheat” the other teams. And what did baseball do? It CHANGED those rules. It banned scuffing the ball. It banned spitballs. It PUNISHED those who would try to go around the rules and it gave the fans the perception that it was doing everything it could to make the sport fair and equitable for all teams and participants.
When baseball had lax rules about performance enhancing drugs (and no testing for drugs), what did the players do? They bulked up with pharmaceuticals that would make a street drug dealer nervous. They came out and hit steroid influenced numbers like 73, 71, and 66 home runs in a season, even though prior to that, the total best season ever seemed to always top out around 60 home runs or less, and usually the league leader hit 40-something types of HR numbers. (For that matter, look at 2014 numbers. With everyone presumably OFF of drugs, the home run leaders in each respective league hit a total of only 40 and 37 home runs). But baseball took the smart approach and cracked down on steroids and banned illegal PED’s, punished those that cheated, and CHANGED their rules to make theirs a fairer game. Their stained shirt from the late 1990’s, early 2000’s has been thrown away and replaced by a newer, cleaner version, and the fans are on board again.
What football is doing, by letting each team be able to “utilize their own balls” is crazy. They give the teams the opportunities TO CHEAT, to hand them the means to manipulate certain playing conditions into their own advantage.
The two main sports that could conceivably have one team or one player handling “their own ball.” and which would also mean that the opposing teams would be handling THEIR own ball, are the sports of football and baseball. The rest of the sports have such a back and forth nature (without play stoppage) that the SAME ball (or puck) is used both ways, by both teams, equally and fairly. The leagues make sure that the ball or puck is the same for BOTH teams. That system WORKS.
Can you imagine in baseball, if it allowed a pitcher to choose “his own baseballs,” which balls he would pick to face a power hitting lineup? I’m guessing he would use a batch of balls that were as weakly compressed as imaginable. I’m guessing that balls that would otherwise be home runs with a normal ball would ONLY fly out to the warning track with the pitchers getting to utilize “their own balls.” That pitcher would have gained an unfair advantage that took the fairness out of the game. And that, my friends, is why they have a uniform baseball that EVERYONE has to use.
It is clear what the NFL needs to do. They need to have ONE standard type of ball, properly and uniformly inflated, and CONTROLLED by league officials (not by one team’s OWN ball boys), for BOTH teams. When teams arrive at the game and hand the officials “their balls,” the officials then take charge of the matter and make ALL balls, for BOTH teams, the SAME, league mandated pressure and texture. Find whatever happy medium it is that works for ALL teams and players, and then make it the uniform standard type football for EVERYBODY. And don’t let anyone else touch those balls but them.
EVERY other sport does this. They ALL use the same, standard, league-controlled balls or pucks when they play.
Why does the NFL, with all of its (“you’ve got to wear the same, exact uniforms and shoes, you’ve got to have the proper numbers for each position, you’ve got to have the same celebration in the end zone after you’ve scored a touchdown”) incredibly regulated UNIFORMITY, have this massive loophole that allows for cheating and deception to take place?
The NFL needs to fix this thing now. They need to announce that between now and next season, THEY will take control of the inflated ball issue. They should announce that it will be the LEAGUE’S job to make the condition of the balls THE SAME for BOTH teams at all times. It should be the LEAGUE’S job to make sure that all 24 footballs are coming from the same, untampered with and uninfluenced source, and that neither team will be able to touch the balls from the beginning of the games to the end (except of course during the actual playing of the game).
Then, they should level SOME kind of punishment on the Patriots, to show the fans that the LEAGUE is out to make sure that fair play is again taking place in all games being played. (Maybe dock them a few draft choices and ban Bill Belichick from wearing hooded sweatshirts on field for one full season)
The NFL needs to throw that shirt out into the garbage. That stain is one that won’t come out. They need to put on a new shirt, not try to clean something that can’t be cleaned. Once the public knows that the inflated football problem will be fixed fairly and correctly, the public will then stop focusing on that big stain they saw on Roger Goodell’s shirt, and can then again be excited about the big game being played. Which is the way it should be.
