The USA Today Sports section today(1-22-15) has four, count them four, articles about the supposed New England Patriots cheating by deflating game balls by 2 pounds against the Colts. Let’s see, first half score NE 17-7 lead, second half when balls were fixed, NE 28-0. Let’s see, how do I make this the central issue of the Super Bowl and dedicate the sports section to this story? Easy, I politicize sports. I set out to destroy the NFL. I make the Ray Rice problem the centerpiece of the sports world for weeks. I try to get Roger Goodell fired over that. I fail. I, being the media, I am really pissed. I like to call the shots on everything in this country, including sports. I’ve done pretty well. Steroids in baseball. Took that all the way to congressional hearings. Got players suspended. Kept guys from the Hall of Fame. Not bad. Tiger Woods and his little scandal. Made that a story for weeks. See, we can get a loser president reelected, we can do anything. But, we get bored just dealing with politics. We want to trash sports too. We like regulations, lots of regulations. The more the better. Controversy creates regulations.
The NFL needs more attention. They make too much money. They get ratings that are far better than the trash we put on our networks. No one watches our news anymore, they all watch cable. No one reads our papers anymore, they get their news from the Internet
. We’ve just about finished our work on golf. The golf business is on life-support. courses are closing, ratings are down, and we have it on the ropes. With golf we get a lot of internal help from those who run the business. The Royal and Ancient’s, those old farts in Scotland who make rules decide to outlaw long putters. Lot’s of amateurs use those putters. So what if a few quit the game. There is one unique golf tournament in the world. It’s the Phoenix Open, or the Waste Management Phoenix Open, as it’s now known. It’s unique in many respects. First of all, there may be as many as 600,000 people who come out to see the event this week. They get more in one day than the LA Open does all week. Why, the group that puts on the tournament get’s it. They make it fun. The 16th hole, a par three, has become an arena with sky boxes and three tiers of seats surrounding the hole. Quiet, forget it. The fans know the golfers and sing their school songs, yell their dog’s names, and boo bad shots. They had caddy races from the tee to the green. Spectators bet on the caddies. The PGA of America decided that was way too much fun. They banned that last year. Golfers threw hats, gloves and other items to the crowd. This year the PGA banned that. See the PGA wants to cut attendance down in Phoenix to be more like LA. See if they can screw up something that works. That’s what the media and the committees do. The tournament will top a total of $100,000, 000 in charitable contributions since inception this year.
So, if you buy into the deflated footballs as significant, drive your little stake into the heart of the NFL. Let’s destroy another popular and fun diversion by making it more political than athletic. Do your part to destroy professional football. Bill Belichick doesn’t give the media the time of day. They absolutely hate his ass. Now they have an opportunity to bring him down like a wounded animal. Watch how hard they try. I am not a Patriots fan. I admire Belichick because he’s a good coach. I admire Tom Brady because he has always been a class act. I did not personally see anyone deflate the footballs at the express direction of either Belichick or Brady, so I can’t pass judgment. That has not deterred the media from passing judgment. In the eyes of the media, both are guilty. Just as the Duke lacrosse team was guilty. Just as the cop in Ferguson, Mo, was guilty. The media in America is guilty. Guilty of pandering to a president who lies often. Guilty of shoving their beliefs down our throats instead of reporting facts. Guilty of trashing reputations without remorse. Guilty of having a hit list of things they want to diminish. The NFL is moving up on that list.
I’ve done the calculation of the change in pressure on the balls, using the Ideal Gas Law equation from chemistry. Assuming no change in the number of atoms inside the ball, assuming no change in the volume of the ball, if they were filled to 12.5 psi indoors at a room temperature of 76 F, and were measured outside at a temperature of 40 F, just the change in temperature would lower the pressure to 10.6 psi. Any abuse of the balls by being used that caused a leak would only make the pressure lower.
So, this whole scandal is a gigantic triumph of scientific illiteracy of the American public, sports writers especially. Must be from all that high quality education the union teachers are providing!