UnNews:Judge throws out Brady suspension
We distort, you deride | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Friday, November 22, 2024, 12:28:59 (UTC) |
Judge throws out Brady suspension |
3 September 2015
FOXBORO, Massachusetts -- Marquee NFL quarterback Tom Brady's four-game suspension has been overturned by a federal court.
The sanction was imposed by League Commissioner Roger Goodell after the AFC Championship Game, in which clubhouse aides of the New England Patriots secreted twelve footballs in a restroom after their inspection by the referee to perform unspeakable acts on them. The Players Union immediately sued in federal court to overturn the suspension; then the NFL sued itself, hoping not just to obviate repeated airline flights to a court in Minnesota but for better success before Judge Richard Berman.
However, Berman reviewed the entire evidence in the case, including the following:
- What is left of the Players Union signed a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) giving Goodell virtually dictatorial powers.
- The league rewrote the rules of American football nine years ago, at the request of Brady himself and Peyton Manning, to let quarterbacks use whatever-the-hell balls they wanted to, except perhaps Nerf footballs, and never before took any interest in the result.
- The Patriots scored much higher when the alleged doctoring of footballs was undone at halftime.
- Brady, the game's premier quarterback, never acknowledged his signature preference for soft balls, and Head Coach Bill Belichick, renowned for knowing and controlling every aspect of the club and the game, merely had a press conference with Brady, where the two chanted in unison, "Air pressure? What's that?"
- Goodell commissioned an "independent" report on the cheating scandal, written by his personal lawyer and edited by the league before it was published, and had the punishment handed down by an "independent" subordinate to comply with the CBA. That report merely found it "more likely than not" that Brady was "generally aware" of a plan to deflate footballs — something Goodell later called proof of a "scheme." The Patriots called this unfair — as though minimum-wage help carry out a clever plan that could ruin their boss without explicit instructions.
- Team owner Robert Kraft accepted his part of the penalty — $1 million and a first-round draft pick — then later apologized to the fans that he had not meant to confess to anything but thought Goodell would now owe him a favor.
- Brady refused to turn over his cellphone so the NFL could review his records, bypassing all the juicy dirt on his apparently deteriorating marriage with supermodel Giselle. Instead, he "had it destroyed" on the day of the meeting with the NFL — but only because it was a Samsung and it was time to switch to an iPhone. And he offered a spreadsheet with, in his own handwriting, an authoritative list of everyone he might have texted regarding football deflation.
- The two clubhouse aides — who could confirm or refute what they did or who is in the conspiracy — were not called to testify, because they seem to have fallen off the face of the earth.
Under prodding by Judge Berman for both sides to settle, the NFL made an offer — provided that Brady would admit to the NFL's entire version of the facts. In other words, Brady tried to assert that he is bigger than the sport, and the NFL's only goal through the entire process was to show he is not.
On Thursday, Judge Berman looked at the plaintiff team and the defendant team at their respective tables in his court, then signed his verdict, which read in its entirety: "You are all morons! Now, get out of my courtroom!"
The Patriots scheduled a press conference to note that backup quarterback Jamie Garoppolo — his one chance to become a major-leaguer up in smoke — has been placed on suicide watch. Boston sports fans were lining up to be placed on the same watch, as they will now have nothing to discuss but the awful Red Sox.
Sources[edit]
- Susanna Kim and Aaron Katersky "Judge Overturns Tom Brady's 'Deflategate' Suspension". Yahoo! Sports, September 3, 2015
- It's actually 40 pages "NFL Player's Association vs. NFL (Management Council)". U.S. District Court, September 3, 2015