FOOTBALL!!

Scott Hardie | September 6, 2014
There's a very popular game starting back up this weekend that people have missed ever since it went away, and I'm not even talking about Rock Block. Football season is underway again and all is right with the world. Whether you prefer college or pro: Do you have any predictions for this season? And which teams are you rooting for?

Aaron Shurtleff | September 6, 2014
In the NFL, I've always been a fan of the Browns, and they are still a hot mess, so I don't expect much from them. Particularly not in Pittsburgh for opening day. The Woods and other Steelers fans will be happy this week. My Browns prediction is 6-10 (being generous!), and anyone talking about playoffs is thoroughly scorned and ridiculed.

Overall, I think the Seahawks have a pretty good chance to repeat, which is almost unheard of in this league. But it's a long season, and injuries can always throw everything into flux.

For NCAA, I'm not sure. Florida State didn't exactly impress me, but that could be week one rust. And a lot of the other highly rated teams played cupcakes for their first week anyways, so blowouts were expected. Give it a few weeks, and re-evaluate, I say.

For my college team (GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GEORGIA BULLDOGS!!), I think good things are ahead. Gurley and the running game looked good, defense was decent against a pretty good Clemson team. I'm a bit worried about Mason (QB), as I didn't see much to impress me, although he played well enough to win. If teams start lining up to stop the run, and make Mason throw more often, I'm not sure if he'll rise to the occasion or not. Hope so. Plus Georgia has their bye week this week, and the early bye means it's a long slog to the finish. High hopes though!

Steve West | September 6, 2014
In a lackluster NFC East division, the Redskins have as good a chance as anyone else if they can get past the Eagles. The Cowboys may have the worst defense in NFL history right now and Eli hasn't shown much with the new system they've installed. I had hoped that the league's new defensive infractions enforcement would have slowed the Seahawks down a little but it sure didn't show Thursday night. Aaron Rogers is on the list of elite quarterbacks but hasn't played a full season since...? The Broncos are my team to beat in the AFC but Tom Brady is looking really good throughout the preseason and it should come down to those two teams in the AFC. San Fran, Seattle, Green Bay, and New Orleans in the NFC...pick 'em. I'm predicting (wrongly, for sure) the Broncos vs. the Saints in the Super Bowl with the Broncos triumphing.

Chris Lemler | September 6, 2014
I usually get into a fantasy football league to see how my teams compare when the real players go out and play. I think the team that is going to be tough to beat this year would be Seattle Seahawks .

Samir Mehta | September 7, 2014
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Scott Hardie | September 13, 2014
Should Roger Goodell resign for his handling of the Ray Rice incident?

Aaron Shurtleff | September 13, 2014
Should he? Probably. But I doubt they can make him, unless they can find an actual witness who will testify to being physically present when he watched the video before he made the 2-game original suspension. I think Verizon has already come out as supporting of the NFL, so since one of their biggest sponsors is cool with it, there's no financial reason to do anything. One of the 2 NFL owners who is overseeing the independent investigation has already said on the record (previous to being appointed to overseeing this, of course) that he knows Roger Goodell, and that he believes he is not lying, so I have zero faith in the investigation. At best he'll get fined, which is a shame.

Steve West | September 13, 2014
I personally don't believe he saw the video. He's been such a "law and order" commissioner that I don't believe he would have hesitated to suspend Rice for more than two games at the time of the original sanction if he had seen it. Ironically if he had suspended him for say 6 to 8 games at the time, none of this would be happening now. The speculation is that this was happening when he was prepared to go soft on Colts owner Jim Irsay and didn't want to appear to be hard on players and soft on owners - his employers. However, I think he could have been hard on both (his displayed tendency) and survived. As it is, he'll survive this as well.

Scott Hardie | September 13, 2014
Isn't the question of Goodell seeing the video ultimately a distraction? As Salon well argued, there's nothing in the video that could not be deduced from information available beforehand. After all, what does Goodell think it looks like when a man beats his wife unconscious? The story has become "did Goodell see the video?" instead of what it really should be, "did Goodell treat domestic violence too lightly?"

Erik Bates | September 15, 2014
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Scott Hardie | October 25, 2014
While the NFL domestic violence scandal has predictably blown over and Goodell has predictably kept his job, NYT considers the bubble that athletes live in that helps them not understand consequences for their actions.

Scott Hardie | January 24, 2015
Any thoughts on "deflategate" or "ballghazi" beyond how stupid those terms are? Warren Sharp crunched some data and found that the Patriots have a suspiciously extreme deviation from the statistical norm regarding fumbles, and it's been happening for years.

Chris Lemler | January 24, 2015
I think this whole thing is stupid because first of all both teams 6 footballs to each. How the hell could the Patriots deflate all 12 balls. This whole thing is stupid.

Samir Mehta | January 24, 2015
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Scott Hardie | February 14, 2015
I thought the same thing about Warren Sapp when I read the link that led me to it. :-) I don't know if the Patriots deflated any balls or not, or I know that I don't trust the NFL to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation, or to announce that the Patriots did indeed cheat for years if they find evidence to that effect. Roger Goodell is very cozy with the owners and teams to rule against the Patriots with anything more than a slap on the wrist (and I'm not even expecting that), plus there's way way way too much money riding on the appearance of a fair game for there to be any surprise announcements of long-term cheating. The league would voluntarily shoot itself in the foot and that's just inconceivable. Perhaps it's time for major sports leagues (ahem, FIFA) to be subject to outside agencies conducting independent investigations.

Scott Hardie | May 14, 2015
Thoughts on the deflategate punishment? I've heard a lot of people -- all of them Patriots fans, suspiciously -- say that the punishment is far too harsh because it was much greater than what was given for similar infractions by other teams, such as San Diego getting fined $20k for enhancing towels, and two teams getting warned for heating footballs without a fine. Me, I say those punishments were far too small, and set up this kind of controversy when the NFL gave a worthy punishment for a change. The ball deflating was a major infraction that Patriots employees attempted to cover up and that has very likely gone on for some time. We can't know definitively if it changed the outcome of a game, but we shouldn't have to know that. Perhaps it's time that the NFL instituted something like the goo game's advanced rules chart that spells out the exact outcome of each possible scenario, so that they can't be accused of playing favorites again.

Samir Mehta | May 14, 2015
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Aaron Shurtleff | May 14, 2015
First, I think we need to wait and see what comes of the inevitable appeal. Sounds like Brady is lawyering up hard.

Second, considering the Wells report said the Patriots organization was generally unaware of what was going on, I think the draft picks were a bit odd, even if you do consider it a second offense. (The million dollars..it's a meaningless amount of money for a multibillion dollar football team, so it's not even a punishment).

Third, the standard punishment for violating the league policy on "performance enhancing drugs" is usually 4 game suspension for a first offense. Seems like a similar and fair penalty to me. How does taking PEDs actually aid you? Unclear, same as the advantages of deflating balls.

Fourth, the towels weren't illegal at the time, but they didn't comply with the refs in handing them over. Small fine for a small offense. The link to the heating footballs is not opening for me, but I think I recalled reading that the teams were not aware it was wrong to heat the balls, they made no attempt to do it secretly, and stopped when they were told not to do it. Both team's balls were subjected to the same heat, so no advantage was given to either side, so I think a warning was sufficient. Deflating the footballs was done after the refs had checked they were properly inflated, and were done in a restroom (supposedly, I guess). That means, to me at least, that they knew it was wrong, and were trying not to get caught doing it. I think that aspect makes this a different matter when it comes to penalty meted out.

Fifth, Brady did not comply and give access to his text messages. Make sure we are speaking clearly: he did not give access to his phone, AND he did not allow them to have access to his text messages outside of that, in a scenario that kept his privacy intact (I believe they wanted his lawyer to just show them any text messages, which he denied them access). I think this shows Brady was covering up something. No, we don't know what, and I doubt we ever will. Why hide if there's nothing worth hiding? (NOTE: I have also made the case that Greg Anderson sitting in jail rather than testify against Barry Bonds pretty much confirms that the allegations about his use of PEDs are likely true, but people still think Bonds is innocent, so... Because I guess a lot of people would sit in jail rather than tell a grand jury something that helps out a friend/client...)

My conclusion: fair enough on Brady, questionable on Patriots organization. Honestly, though, I don't think anyone feels any differently now than they did before, so I'm not sure what the point of all this was...

Scott Hardie | May 15, 2015
Good points, though I can't help but wonder:

Should a team/organization not be punished if it was generally unaware of the rule violations of a few members/employees? If I break the law in the course of doing my job, my company gets fined by the authorities. Is ignorance of misconduct a valid excuse? Is it not easy to escape responsibility by isolating the bad actors from senior management and/or simply pretending not to know what they were doing?

Also, should a team/organization not be punished if the rule violations did not give an advantage? I prefer to come down much harder on the ball-heating because circumstances don't change the fact that a violation is a violation. Suppose that someone calculated that the temperature and humidity happened to be the exact right combination to make the deflated footballs have absolutely zero advantage after all. Was it not still wrong to deflate them, let alone to cover it up afterward? The fact that two teams canceled each other out by both heating their balls suggests to me that the punishment should be double, not zero.

There have been unfavorable comparisons to Ray Rice's suspension last year. Assault, especially such a vicious one, is a far greater offense than deflating footballs, no doubt. But one offense affects the sport of football and one does not, except in the tangential PR/business sense. Should the NFL even punish its players for their personal conduct away from the sport? It seems to me that the NFL and/or the Ravens should have treated Rice like any other business would treat any other employee who was discovered to have done something so awful and criminal: Either fire him because they want nothing to do with a criminal, or ignore it because it's not relevant to his job. Issuing a fine and suspending him for a few games as if he had merely broken a rule on the field invites exactly the kinds of comparsions that I linked to. (I wouldn't be surprised to learn that personal conduct is technically written in the NFL rules, but I mean to discuss what should be and not what is.)

Samir Mehta | May 15, 2015
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Aaron Shurtleff | May 15, 2015
Scott, I think you are looking at the issue a bit differently than I am, for the second issue. I am not trying to say that that not being given an advantage is the sole criteria for determining if a punishment should be given. I am saying that the severity of the punishment should reflect the severity of the crime. I mean, not to push this into the absurd, but isn't that why there's murder charges (of several degrees of severity) in addition to manslaughter (and probably more that I have never heard of), instead of just one punishment for causing the death of another. I would think that, in the ball warming case, the punishment should be less severe because there was no clear advantage given and it was open (I'll give you that ignorance of the illegal nature maybe shouldn't factor in, but I still might, if it were me). Whereas the secretive nature of the deflation, the knowledge that it was not legal, and the presumed advantage given would, I think, merit a more harsh penalty.

For the first (and I can't believe you're putting me in the position of defending the Patriots organization), it's not always that way, I don't think. If I am driving a work vehicle, and I get a ticket for speeding, they don't get to fine both me (for being the speeding driver) and my workplace (for not adequately informing me that I shouldn't speed), do they? And even if they did know that I was speeding (let's say they could check my driving logs, and I tend to arrive places earlier than I could have possibly gotten there following posted speed limits), would that allow double fines to be collected? I have to think employers can't be held responsible for every violation committed by their employees, but I have been told I am naive. And why even note in the report that the organization was unaware, if it's not a factor? Or is it just a factor in the punishment?

For the third, it sounds terrible, but yeah. I think the NFL has to come down harder on players for on-field infractions, simply because no one else will. With cases like Ray Rice (or Adrian Peterson, or any of the many many others), the off-field crimes should be investigated and punished by the proper authorities. The NFL (as an overall organization, and each team individually) only punishes these things to look like they're doing something. That's why the punishment was initially light, and then when the negative backlash came, they adjusted it. I wonder if it was in any way affected by Ray Rice's (seemingly) not getting any real punishment from the police (because Janay didn't want to press charges...which is another tangle, but I'm staying away from that one).