Posted on 08/12/2015 2:46:27 PM PDT by big'ol_freeper
The first round of legal sitdowns involving Tom Brady, Roger Goodell and Judge Richard Berman are complete, and while there’s probably a few more sessions in store for both sides — and Berman reiterated that he had not made up his mind — it initially appears that Brady has emerged with a legal win.
While Berman hammered at both sides, the key points came down to whether or not there was some sort of direct evidence that implicated Brady in the scheme. Berman pressed NFL lawyer Daniel Nash for a smoking gun in the case, and NFL attorney Daniel Nash responded: “Is there a text in which Mr. Brady instructs someone to put a needle in a football? No. There is no such direct evidence.”
Berman asked: “Where is the evidence of a scheme or conspiracy that covers the [AFC title game]? I’m having trouble finding it.”
Summed up legal analyst Michael McCann: “I think the most important takeaway from today is that Judge Berman is skeptical about the evidence — or lack of it — linked to Brady and the alleged ball deflation scheme.”
(Excerpt) Read more at itiswhatitis.weei.com ...
Wrong.
Well, a whole year is probably excessive, I agree he deserves a punishment for the unwillingness to cooperate. The NFL has every right to punish for not helping at all.
seems to me that the lazy enforcement of rules is the culprit...
and unless the nfl has stats showing that the balls were inflated ONLY in that one game, not in the hundreds of other games, then I say no dice Mr. Goodell...
they allow felon to play..they allow thugs....
yet they're going to go after Brady....
This whole thing is made up stupidity while real crimes committed by the left (read Hillary) are ignored.
It’s just football. Geez.
Well, the point of the suspension is that Brady destroyed the likely source of such evidence. So this probing on whether the NFL has direct proof would be like someone being prosecuted for obstruction of justice and the judge saying "it doesn't matter if he destroyed the evidence, can you prove he did it?". Basically trying a man for one thing but the judge holding you to a different standard altogether.
He doesn’t have to cooperate, it’s not a legal investigation. And given the stuff that’s leaked from just what he’s turned over he would appear to have had legitimate privacy concerns.
In the end they have no proof he did anything, no knowledge of how much ball naturally deflate during half a game (interesting that NOW the league will be spot checking balls at half time), and the listed punishment for the rule he MAY have broken is a $25K fine. The only leg the league has to stand on here is that many judges are of the opinion that if the CBA allows it they don’t want to get involved.
“seems to me that the lazy enforcement of rules is the culprit...”
Seems to me a billion + dollar industry would have had different ball protocol if they cared at all about it in the first place. That each team is in control of their own, and they aren’t simply checked by officials through out the game means the NFL just wants to promote scoring. I mean, don’t they actually allow differently inflated balls for kicking? Why allow that?
Freegards
"They could suspend him for the whole year for simply not cooperating - by destroying his phone, rather than turning it over to the investigation."
Ouch. What kind of country do you want to live in? Was it *his* phone, or was it a *league* phone anyway? Oh, it was his private property you say? Well then you do not want to establish this precedent. Believe me.
Already there is probing of these boundaries as we speak, with employers trying to force applicants to give up their Facebook passwords and email to go on fishing expeditions because they are so politically correct they are afraid to hire someone who might not be a neutered metrosexual worker-bot. They are specifically looking for things someone might say something "racist" or something bad about homos or gay marriage or whatever.
Whether you like the guy or not ( and it is hard to stomach the insanity that jealous Brady haters will swallow totalitarianism just to get their way ) you must understand that the goal here was a fishing expedition and that the NFC front office would have really been looking for some politically incorrect statement they could use as leverage or to destroy him.
This is one reason the players union has finally showed some sanity. Slippery slope doesn't begin to describe this.
DISCLAIMER: L.A. Rams fan way back when I cared much about football. However, I think I will be strongly rooting for the Patriots this year just for the schadenfreude.
"and unless the nfl has stats showing that the balls were inflated ONLY in that one game, not in the hundreds of other games, then I say no dice Mr. Goodell..."
Scientifically, they should perform a one-year audit, of all games for both teams. Measure each ball before and after and table the data to get an accurate benchmark.
If they even have this allegedly accurate data of ball pressure for that Pats-Colts game in the first place ( wait, for only one team? wtf? ), it is useless without a scientific control.
This case reminds me of tampered climate data where an agenda trumps everything.
He probably had contact numbers, family photos, videos and information not related to football that he wanted private. He should expect that privacy. Now if the league furnished him a football business phone only, that would be different.
Just to be clear...Goodell has stated that he is not aware of the footballs having ever been checked before. They had no comparison. That, and general ignorance, is why they were as Troy Vincent admitted during the appeal, completely unaware that footballs lose pressure when they cool.
I thought I read somewhere that he had a history of destroying his phone every 4 months. I have no reason why, but that was his practice. In this case, he made the phone available initially, but after a while asked his attorney’s if it was ok to destroy the phone. They told him it was ok. As I remember, he agreed to give the league a list of all the people he had texted so they could get the data from their phones. Sounds to me that Brady had stuff on his phone that he didn’t want the NFL to see, stuff that probably had nothing to do with “Deflategate” but might be embarrassing otherwise. I don’t blame him.
First, they have no right to his private phone...at all.
Second, they had all the communications with the relevant people already.
Third, given that the NFL selectively leaks embarrassing texts and e-mails not germane to the case, only a fool would turn it over. Once in their hands, there is no longer any control over the contents...and modern phones are like diaries.
A month ago, the NFL was loudly arguing that they didn’t want his phone. The phone apparently broke in early February and he retained it until after Wells said they didn’t want the phone, in March. Wells never insisted in any way that Brady must turn over his phone and Wells himself has testified to that effect.
Once Brady found out they’d punish him for it, he turned over all the call records, what texts he could recover, and about 5000 e-mails.
In any case, you misunderstand how texts work, as having the phone does not really affect what texts can be accessed. The difficulty with recovering some texts is because he texted over 10,000 times and aged a lot of texts out of his Google account.
It’s just something to make people angry.
Your boss suspects of you of stealing. Now, turn over your private cell phone so he can dig for proof.
“Well, the point of the suspension is that Brady destroyed the likely source of such evidence”
It’s just agitprop for those who don’t understand how texting works and think they are only on the phone, or even only on HIS phone.
Here’s a tech magazine’s partial explanation of how it works:
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/even-tom-brady-smash-phone-itd-make-zero-sense/?mbid=social_twitter
Per the transcripts of the appeal hearing, the NFL doesn’t appear to have actually wanted the limited stuff from his phone either and declined it when offered.
People in sports are always looking for an edge. Everyone understood that and that is why we have referees and umpires. Old sports reporters particularly understood that.
Now this new breed of sports reporters are projecting their leftist views on sports and every thing must be a scandal. If the NFL wants the balls at a certain pressure, they need to check and maintain them as in baseball.
From what he said, he had not only contact lists and numbers that he didn’t feel were his to give out, but contract negotiation stuff. Even the partial release has things he has been ridiculed for, and for which he has felt he needed to apologize.
The NFL has released irrelevant but embarrassing communications between McNally and his mother, Incognito and his friends, and others...quite selectively. They don’t do that to anyone that they are trying to roast. They also don’t reduce punishment for turning over phones.
Further, even Roger Goodell did not give up his personal phone in the investigation of his handling of the Ray Rice episode.
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