Tom Brady's four-game suspension now looks like a done deal, completing the NFL's disciplinary overkill on the New England Patriots.
You can picture Commissioner Roger Goodell lighting up his cigar, feet up on a desk, basking in the decision by a federal court not to hear the Patriots quarterback’s appeal.
This week’s decision affirms the commissioner’s right to act as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner without restraint.
In the wake of the “Deflategate” investigation in which guilt was presumed and virtually nothing incriminating was proved, the Patriots ultimately were fined US$1 million (Dh3.67 million), lost their first-round draft pick this year, will lose a fourth-round pick in 2017 and now must play the first four games of the season without the sport’s most accomplished quarterback.
• More: A Browns title would be even sweeter than the Cavs' win
It’s been a year and a half since New England was first accused of deflating footballs in the AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts. It’s hard to believe the silliness, then the cynicism, of the ensuing process.
To review: Goodell appointed an NFL business partner, Ted Wells, to check out the “facts.” Wells, in turn, employed the same science-for-hire company that worked for the tobacco industry to conclude that there was no evidence second-hand smoke was harmful.
On cue, the hired hands decided that someone deliberately deflated footballs. Subsequently, dozens of amateur physicists – from university labs to junior high school science fairs – proved the opposite: that cool, wet conditions easily accounted for the deflation. Deflation that even the Wells report also acknowledged occurred in some of the Colts footballs.
It didn’t really matter, of course. The NFL was determined to sting the Patriots, regardless. Brady and team employees were interviewed at length, all of them vehemently denying wrongdoing. Whether they were truthful or not, who knows? But it left the investigation with no direct proof of culpability.
Instead, ambiguous emails were interpreted to conclude that a scheme was “more probable than not” and Brady was “generally aware”.
So why did Goodell and friends feel compelled to hand out, by far, the harshest punishment in league history against the Pats, despite the paltry evidence? Quite simply, the organisation is widely disliked and distrusted around the NFL for multiple reasons, some justified. This was a chance for Goodell, who is social with New England owner Robert Kraft, to prove that he stands, when push comes to shove, with the other 31 teams.
Despite the loud media criticism of the Wells report, the process and the harsh punishment inflicted, Goodell then stood firm to confirm his power, which had been established in the collective bargaining agreement with the players association.
Goodell’s unchecked right to pick his investigator, testify in the process, hand out the punishment, then hear the appeal sounds like something Ghengis Khan would have rejected as laughably unfair.
Yet, that’s what the players agreed to, and what a court ultimately upheld, in respect of labour law.
No matter how much the other teams in the NFL might despise the Patriots, they should understand that the same, one-sided process could burn them one day, as well.
And no matter how much the players union whined about the decision last week, declaring that, “We have a broken system that needs to be fixed,” they did this to themselves.
Most observers recognise that no reasonable system of justice should operate that way, facilitating Goodell’s mission to cripple the Patriots. That’s why one lower court originally ruled in Brady’s favour last summer.
The only way out now is through the next collective bargaining agreement. Unfortunately, that’s not happening until 2021.
In the meantime, best advice: Don’t anger the king.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport
