Players, coaches and executives have come to view the Patriots’ situation as a referendum on commissioner power. Many of the sources I spoke to used the same word: “railroaded.” As in, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell railroaded the Patriots. As in, the commissioner used his power unfairly and arbitrarily.They think, in effect, that what happened to the Patriots could happen to any of them.
Source: The Patriots Are Not on the Clock: Deflategate Fallout Looms Large in NFL Draft | Bleacher Report
Oh, so now the rest of the NFL starts to get over their blinding Patriots hate and sees this whole charade for what it really was — a railroading. I’m still so surprised by those who checked out after the Wells Report, assured the Patriots were cheating cheaters who finally got caught cheating. Yes, there are actually still football fans who are Team Goodell in this once single solitary instance, because they hate the Patriots.
Anyone who read any bit of material beyond the Wells Report and the NFL’s court arguments should see that there was plenty about this whole thing that reeked of not just unfairness but of a systematic attempt to win the case both in real court and the court of public opinion no matter what the truth actually was.
And yes, if you can get over how much you hate the Patriots, you’ll see that arbitrary and severe punishment is now the law of the land in the NFL.
Still, for all the hate that Commissioner Goodell gets, and yes, he is uniquely terrible, it’s still the owners that control the NFL. Goodell is, for most purposes, just the figurehead. The one who gets paid a huge salary to take all the flack. And if it wasn’t Roger Goodell it’d be someone else we’d all despise. But it’s the owners that want an 18-game season and games all over the earth and games on Thursday every week and every other shitty addition that’s happened to the NFL under Goodell’s watch.
The NFL is the owners, not Roger Goodell.
So this article is a bit significant, if true. If the owners are starting to see how, even on his short leash, that Goodell is still mishandling every instance of discipline that comes his way, they could actually institute real change. And maybe that’s enough to put punishment in the hands of someone, or someones, who can rule neutrally and fairly based on the facts and precedent, instead of over-correcting and applying broad powers to make up for other past punishments that didn’t go far enough in the eyes of some.
Mike,
Thank you for taking the time to comment on these proceedings. I apologize for the legal junk, but it’s necessary context for my questions…..
In MLB. Garvey, Justice Stevens started his dissent with:
It is well settled that an arbitrator “does not sit to dispense his own brand of industrial justice.” Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S. 593, 597 (1960). We have also said fairly definitively, albeit in dicta, that a court should remedy an arbitrator’s “procedural aberrations” by vacating the award and remanding for further proceedings. Paperworkers v. Misco, Inc., 484 U. S. 29, 40–41, n. 10 (1987). Our cases, however, do not provide significant guidance as to what standards a federal court should use in assessing whether an arbitrator’s behavior is so untethered to either the agreement of the parties or the factual record so as to constitute an attempt to “dispense his own brand of industrial justice.” Nor, more importantly, do they tell us how, having made such a finding, courts should deal with “the extraordinary circumstance in which the arbitrator’s own rulings make clear that, more than being simply erroneous, his finding is completely inexplicable and borders on the irrational.”
Have Stevens’ fears been realized?
What possible evidence could Brady provide that would prove that Goodell and the NFL’s behavior is “untethered” or that the their findings are “inexplicable and border on the irrational”?
Someone accused of murder could produce a live body. Someone accused of bank robbery could show that nothing was stolen. Someone accused on deflating footballs could show data indicating that the drop in air pressure was due to natural physical occurrences. What more is possible?
Can you imagine any possible piece of evidence that would prove Brady’s innocence in the mind of Goodell and all those who believe he cheated? Or is their belief that Brady cheated a blind faith that cannot be perturbed by any evidence or scientific facts?
The ramifications of this ruling for NFLPA is difficult to comprehend.
Thanks for the comment. I think the only thing needed would be PSI data from a large sample of games, which would most likely show that the deflation that occurred with the Patriots balls was very much the norm. I’d bet we’d see a range of PSI numbers all over the map depending on the weather. We thought that was what the NFL was going to do this past season, instead it became spot checks to make sure no one was tampering with the balls. Seems like the NFL probably started recording the PSI numbers, saw they demonstrated the exact same tendencies as the Patriots’, then decided to bury it because it would undermine their entire case which, by the way, was entirely built on a text message sent in May 2014 and that Brady “destroyed” (their handpicked word) his phone. How great it would be to have a whistle blower from inside the NFL who saw how they were trying to stack the deck against the Patriots at every turn instead of just looking for the truth.