Brady vs The Man

Yeah, I have some thoughts on this.  This whole damn thing is much smaller than it is being made out to be.  It is also much bigger than it is being made out to be.

This is pine tar on a bat (for which Hall of Famer George Brett famously gave up exactly nothing).  This is pitcher goop on the brim of every hat and slicked on every quaff of hair (with which every pitcher in the history of the Major Leagues gets away every day.  Scott-free).  This is the Vikings and Panthers illegally heating balls in the frigid Minnesota cold.  Yeah, that’s right.  Same sport.  Recent history.  And what happened to the Vikings and Panthers?

NFL:  Hey, you kids.  Stop it.

Vikings and Panthers:  OK, sorry.

This is an equipment violation.  An Equipment Violation!!!!!!!!!!  This is one step up from wearing the wrong color socks.  This is nothing.

OK, I hear you.  The Patriots could have been gaining competitive advantage from this particular equipment violation.  I have seen the fumble numbers.  They seem damning.  But I have also seen the numbers on players on vs off the Patriots and know that those numbers render the Patriots’ ability to hold onto the football a little harder to explain than some psi bullshit.  Maybe it has to do with that guy on the sideline with a dick empirically proven to be at least 54 yards long, since he stuck it in Pete Carroll’s ear from the opposite sideline last February.  Bill doesn’t ever suffer a running back got the drops.  Ever.  He’s like Tim McGraw in Friday Night Lights.  Somebody run those numbers against all the rubes in the league who inexplicably tolerate giving the ball to the other team.

OK, I hear you.  Still, though.  Those balls had to be easier to throw.  And this is the dude who advocated for home team control over the footballs during games.

Pause.

Step One:  The National Football League lets Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and the other quarterbacks (oh, you mean those guys who completely drive this league since it is now three steps away from flag football?) have total control over the footballs they throw.

Step Two: One of these quarterbacks is punished by the NFL for allegedly utilizing the control over the footballs granted to him by the NFL.

OK, I hear you.  No, Phatty, seriously.  Tom-

Pause. Again.

What?  What did Tom Brady do?  There is no evidence that he did anything other than say “hey, boys, keep those things as low as you can for me and I will hook you up.”  That is in no way a violation of any law, rule, memo, or arbitrary moral code that the NFL has ever devised.  Not one. 

Go ahead.  Find some.  Present it.  Tell me this is any different from you telling your buddy a chick is hot and then your wife promptly accusing you of cheating.  I’ll listen.

The problem is, all Wells has is secondhand texts about who Tom thinks is hot.  No evidence of cheating.  None.

OK, I hear you.  Tom did not cooperate.  If he was innocent, he should have coughed up his phone records and texts.  He should have cooperated as much as possible.  If he didn’t do it, what does he have to hide?

Ah, there’s the onion.  This is where this issue goes from something too small to merit this much analysis, venom, and goddamned ink to something that calls into question some of the most integral tenets of our society.

I will preface this with one thought, so that I might be uninterrupted henceforth:  I acknowledge that the NFL is not beholden to the laws of due process that bind our own governments.  I would only counter with the thought that those same due process laws that protect us from unfair acts by government at least outline a series of defined steps required to take away the rights of citizens, while the NFL, with all its high profile and billion dollar incomes that would be the envy of most governments around the world, is in possession of no system at all.  Instead, the NFL’s legal system consists of the whims of one man who has proven himself to be no great distributor of justice.  I would humbly submit that under a system like that, one is one’s own best guardian of one’s own rights.

That said,

To those of you who say that Tom Brady impeached the integrity of The League or The Game by not cooperating, to those of you who say that if he is free of blame then he should have nothing to hide, to those of you who say that he should just roll over and cooperate:

Just who the hell do you think you are?

To quote many people over the years defending many just and many unsavory positions, I thought this was AMERICA.  Tom Brady has a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to not incriminate himself.  Tom Brady owes no one a God damned thing when it comes to his texts, his phone, or any other personal property.  Ted Wells made a great show of saying that Tom needed only provide what he considered relevant, and he would have “taken him at his word.”  Well, forgive me, Ted, but if you planned on taking Tom at his word, you would have done it after his press conference on 22 January, when he told the world that these accusations were bullshit.  Why in God’s name should a man being investigated believe that the man investigating him will give him any quarter at all?

Our society is built on a small collection of extremely powerful and important ideas.  At the very beginnings of our nation, those sacred ideas were enshrined within the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.  Among those ideas was the right of a citizen to refuse to incriminate himself.  This is not a free pass to criminals.  This is a vital and holy guarantee to all people of this nation.  It forcibly and actively protects our freedom from oppression and tyranny.  To impeach Tom Brady in the press for merely being aware of his own rights is either willfully ignorant or enthusiastically vicious.  To punish him, not for cheating, because that cannot be substantiated under any burden of proof devised by man, but for not helping his enemies to hurt him, is totalitarian.

In my worst possible case scenario, Tom Brady asked a couple of guys to keep his footballs at an air pressure that was below legal levels, which lands him in a moral tie with Aaron Rodgers, who requests people keep his footballs inflated to a level that is above the legal levels (please do not forget that he freely admitted this).  Neither man, in my opinion, is perfect, but neither of them is significantly besmirched.  You may disagree.  That is your right as an American. 

What you do not have a right to do is to rob a fellow American citizen of his Fifth Amendment Rights.  I don’t care what you think.  I don’t care how much you hate the Patriots.  I don’t care what you think of the Patriots’ history.   You just can’t do it.

I don’t have to care about your misplaced outrage.  Just like Tom Brady doesn't have to roll over for the man.