Posted on 01/24/2015 4:38:38 PM PST by servo1969
Can we be honest for a minute about the latest liberal crusade gripping the country like a deflated football?
If you are sincerely concerned about fair play in sports and waiting patiently for the NFL to conclude its investigation of “Deflategate,” this column is not directed at you. Maybe you’re a New England Patriots fan or just a neutral observer. Maybe you don’t care about football at all.
But for the rest of you, the mob salivating over the prospect of finding something to diminish the Patriots’ 2014 achievements, let’s face it.
You hated Tom Brady before the national media lost its collective mind over the air pressure in footballs.
You hated Tom Brady before Spygate.
Your hatred of Brady goes back much further than that. You despised him in high school, when you wanted to sit with the jocks in the cafeteria. You detested him when he was dating the cheerleaders.
You loathed Brady when he upset your team in the Super Bowl. You screamed with rage when he dissected your team’s secondary like a surgeon and exposed the Swiss cheese-like holes in your coverages. You were outraged when he didn’t come out of the game after throwing at least four touchdown passes.
Then when he married a supermodel? Game over.
You don’t hate him because he cheats. You hate him because he wins. If he’s exposed in the current NFL probe, that’s something you’ll love.
I get it now, but for a long time I didn’t. I could understand why people disliked Bill Belichick, even if I didn’t agree. But Brady wasn’t much of a trash-talker, at least off the field. He was no Richard Sherman. He usually says the right thing in public. His teammates seem to enjoy playing with him and for him, even if he occasionally yells at receivers who run the wrong routes or referees who make unfavorable calls.
Few professional athletes have the character of Mother Teresa. If they’re even as decent as Tim Tebow, they’ll soon be out of a job. But if I had to compile a list of the biggest jerks in the NFL, Brady would not rank very high.
Tom Brady is a winner. He has won 76.5 percent of the games he has started. He has been to the AFC Championship the majority of seasons he has played. He has three Super Bowl rings. He is about to make his sixth appearance in the big game.
A certain amount of jealousy is human nature. But the contempt for Brady’s sustained success goes beyond that. It’s a larger liberal war against success, based on the sentiments expressed by the senior senator in the Pats’ home state, Elizabeth Warren, and then later repeated more pithily by Barack Obama.
All those records? Tom Brady didn’t build that.
Success cannot be earned, the game must be rigged.
You don’t care that he has three rings, because Spygate. You don’t care that when throwing fully inflated footballs he completed 82 percent of his passes against the Indianapolis Colts just this year, because cheating.
I can already hear you saying, “Wait a minute, Antle. I’m no liberal. I’m a true-blue red-state American and I just don’t like the cut of Brady’s cheating-assed jib.”
The liberals have gotten to you anyway. They know you don’t like Boston, the city closest to where Brady plays, or California, where the quarterback is from. You might not even like Michigan, where Brady went to college.
The same politics of envy that liberals exploit to make some people crave tax increases on the wealthy has turned you against the winningest quarterback of our time, a hero to the blue-collar and culturally conservative parts of the Bay State, a true Patriot.
If the rules were broken, they were broken and someone needs to be held accountable. Personal responsibility is a conservative value. As Belichick is fond of saying, “It is what it is.”
What I’m talking about is the pure joy some people feel at the possibility a new anti-Brady talking point exists, the unadulterated glee that accompanies each Patriots loss.
Drew Bledsoe, the man who lost his job to Tom Brady, doesn’t feel this way. Neither apparently does Rich Gannon, who lost the “tuck rule” game to him.
Brady has been battered by some elite NFL pass rushes. Does he have the pocket agility to evade the rush to judgement?
If Brady loses the upcoming Super Bowl, there will be only one consolation. All the people who hate winners will transfer their bile to the Seattle Seahawks instead.
You are right, I hate Brady. I have hated him ever since he dumped his pregnant girlfriend.
I find it unlikely that even a professional could hold one ball and say, "Waitaminute ... this is NOT 12.5 psi!! This is 12 psi, man!"
The whole this is senseless hype.
And the fine for Ball Tampering is just $75,000.
It's NOT a big deal, and the Patriots kicked ass in the second half when we KNOW the balls were all legal. There is just nothing to this issue except a drive for Super Bowl ratings.
Take a deep breath and think a minute. From the warm training room to a cold field balls always lose about one psi air pressure. Except for the kicker’s ball wich is kept under somebody’s coat to keep it flexible. The real question is: “how did the Colts keep their footballs from losing pressure?”
And by the way the above story could have mentioned that Brady gave up big bucks to help build the team that plays with him. He’s also the only one left from his first superbowl team. The rest are newbies who will be grateful as hell if he can lead them to one. Jealous sniveling is not becoming but that’s what most of the diatribe really is. Along with demonstrating how few people actually passed high school physics.
The story also could have mentioned that Payton Manning is the other half of the crew that lobbied the rules committee to institute the rule letting QB’s choose their own game balls——and nobody else really cares.
I played a bunch of football back when and I don’t remember anybody giving a rip about how much air was in the balls-—except maybe a kicker——who wasn’t really a football player——just a k i c k e r.
Just as the Seahawks humiliated The Broncos a year ago, they’ll do the same to the Patriots this year. Final score: Hawks 38, Pattsies 17.
I'm not a fan of Brady, but I think the NFL looks a lot worse in this case than the Patriots do. I mean, the NFL knew all the way back in early November that there was evidence of low air pressure in the footballs the last time the Patriots and Colts played ... and they didn't do anything about it until after the same issue surfaced at the AFC championship game? What kind of league governing body is this?
I agree that this is a lot of senseless hype, but on this particular point I think you're wrong. The whole issue came up in the prior game between the Patriots and Colts when a player on the Colts who intercepted Brady twice noticed that something didn't feel right about the balls. Now if a guy who catches a ball twice in a game can tell the difference, then I can guarantee you that a player like a center, quarterback, running back, etc. who handles the ball dozens of times during the game will know the difference.
“the liberal war on deflated footballs is all about driving up super bowl ratings”
Precisely, the SB is about dragging rich folks into the Arizona stadium who will pay $12 for a dried out, mechanically-seperated hotdog on a dried out one-week old bun.
It’s all about really gross eating, man.
Go, Green Bay.
ESPN/ABC home state is in a suburb of Boston, Mass. and the Pats are in a suburb of Boston, Mass. Is it any wonder why the news is always about the Pats? I tire of hearing about the Pats, either positive or negative.
If they cheated then they should be boiled in oil, period!
Anyone remember the Dolphins vs. Patriots when at the end of the game the Patriots had convict clean an area for the kicker to make the kick easier as the Dolphins never got that courtesy?
Spygate where NFL fine the Patriots over a Million Dollars and draft picks and conveniently the NFL lost the evidence to show the public.
Russell Wilson is the Tim Tebow who praises the lord after each win that is who I am pulling for in the Super Bowl.
Most people out here, rightly, detest the mainstream sucmbag leftist media....and the sports media is no different. A group of lazy, stupid, insipid left leaning idiots; the bunch of them. They took this small, nothing story, and made it the biggest story in the world for several days.
He says he’s an independent.
Personally I don’t hate Brady...that’s a very strong word, reserved (for me) for the occupant of the White House.
But I’m not much of a fan, either. He strikes me as a preening, prissy little metrosexual. I DO hate those stupid hipster pompom caps he wears.
(To the tune of Hank William’s “Cheatin’ Heart”)
Those cheatin’ Pats
and ratings sweep
Goodell will smile
yet get no sleep
He’ll tally stats
the whole night through
Those cheatin’ Pats
will sell for you.
I’m with you on the cheating, but I don’t know if I’d use the “snowplow caper” as an example of cheating. That was done right on the field in front of everyone — including the officials. If there was any problem with it, the officials should have put a stop to it right there on the spot.
Don’t forget the Patriots OC, McDaniels was involved in his own video scandal dubbed Spygate2. The best outcome for this episode would be for Seattle to win again. The kerfuffle would die out.
I just checked and did the math. Since 2003, the Patriots have averaged 13.68 wins each year. Virtually just 2 losses per season. BB became head coach in 2000. What are the odds of this type of record for over a decade with personnel changes, etc.? Cheating? You bet. And please, don’t any of you start in with the “You sound like a liberal, bashing success” crap.
see #34
“then I can guarantee you that a player like a center, quarterback, running back, etc. who handles the ball dozens of times during the game will know the difference.”
What about a referee? They handle the ball before and after every play
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