Just heard on ESPN that all 24 balls will be coated with BALLAGRA hoping they will stay hard for 4 hours.

Some of the comments on here are unbelievable to say the least.

I'm amazed at those who believe the Patriots are the only NFL franchise who cheats or does things to gain an advantage over their opponents an others are above this. But back to the colts/pats game if the pats scored twice as many points after the alleged balls were corrected than before who really had the advantage? Sounds to me like sour grapes.I watched the game. You can't play the way the colts did and expect to win.

Amen. Game over. The team with the most points wins. The top two teams play on Sunday, and the team with the most points wins the championship.

Allowing this team, that got their butts handed to them in a 45-7 loss, to make these allegations sets a bad precedent.

All the haters can probably find some other thing to do Sunday night at 7:00pm, while the fans will be watching the best game of the year. And the good news is Tom Brady is planning on playing another ten years, according to the NYTimes Sunday magazine article. Hurrah!!!!

Besides allegations by others the NFL have failed to handle this incident like they have everything else. Between the media leaks and when and how the balls were handled by and by who, you don't know what to believe. But. Some do.

I have had some experience with footballs. In all this noise about it, would someone please explain exactly what advantage is obtained with a slightly reduced PSI? I just checked one with 13 Lbs and then let out 2 for comparison. Could hardly feel the difference. I am surprised I haven't seen any of the "talking heads" on TV perform such a simple test before ranting. This is much ado about nothing, again, just like the week before most other Super Bowls. They need to fill that empty week with something.

That's exactly right. All talking heads. I do know from experience that the little valve devices in football's, basket and soccer balls weaken with time and every time you pierce them to test pressure or add air will pass air. If you also familiar with Charles law of gases only inert gases do not change pressure with temperature.

I don't know how many times the needle would have to be inserted to lose 2 LBS due to leakage at the valve, but a game would be completed long before it happened. -- I wondered if this thread might morph into the topic of Nitrogen for your tires and applying that nonsense to footballs. Maybe some "talking head" will pick up on that one tomorrow? Helium anyone? That would add a new element to the result when they "float" a pass out to the flat.

I suppose that people read what they want and disregard other information. But. several other former NFL quarterbacks have come out and said that there is no way that anyone, including Tom Brady would have known that the balls were under inflated. Many experts and former players have come out on both sides of this issue.

But since you have all the facts and absolutely KNOW that The Patriots under inflated then balls, perhaps you should call the NFL and tell the that they should call off this investigation because you have the answer that they're looking for.

I've address the so called spy gate incident of seven years ago. It, like this was a minor, technical infraction of a rule. All teams video their opponents practices and it is allowed. You just can't do it outside of a designated area. The Patriots were guilty of making that small error and paid for it.

But, it's OK. You just go on hating and we will watch our team in the Superbowl.

Has everyone heard the latest, by the way? The equipment manager for the Patriots took the balls into the bathroom adjacent to the referees locker room for 90 seconds! Now, there's a smoking gun if I ever heard one. There is simply no other plausible reason for him to have gone into the bathroom for 90 seconds before heading out to the field with the balls other than to deflate 11 of them in that 90 seconds. I think that they have them cold now.

New england cheaters
 

Doc - I think we're just going to have to wait for the NFL to speak out. In the fog of deflation and the men's room steam we'll just have to wait until they rule to find out what is in it.

Go Pats

Next time they play the packers:cryin2: could be the cheaters vs the choakers

NE Pats won 3 Super Bowls with Belechick, along with the Spygate scandal.

NE is trying to win their 4th now, with the DeflateGate scandal.

The defateGate scandal could be much ado about nothing in terms of the size of a QB's hands and the grip of the football while attempting to pass. Some QB's seem to think this is not the difference in winning a game and some do.

I think it has more to do with the culture the coach has created. Everyone in the NFL says some things are just gamemanship and all teams try to get any advantage if possible. Everyone wants a level playing field and know they have been beaten honestly. Whether this really happened and who in the Pats organization was told to do this speaks more to the issue.

Roger Goodall always talks about protecting the NFL shield of integrity. Well, it's been a bad year for the NFL and it's personnel. Like all managers/coaches, they have to take the responsibility for what happens to the team.

Belechick is a great coach and a sure Hall of Fame type coach and certainly didn't need to cheat his way into greatness. Sadly, I think his legacy will be tarnished just like baseball players who have used PED'S.

Just like that game "Clue" The ballboy did it in the bathroom with a needle. Uck, tainted footballs, they've been in the bathroom!

Here is something amusing to take your mind off of all of this. Now, I never liked the Seahawks much because they whined so darn much after the Steelers beat them in the Super Bowl way back when. In fact, they're still whining about it. And I never liked the Patriots very much because they got caught blatantly videotaping in 2007,and oh yeah, that was the year they knocked us out of the playoffs, aided by said tapes.

So I was torn who to root for, or not to watch at all. But I have to watch, because it's the last football game of the season. Then I found this in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today:

Ron Cook: Forget the Patriots -- Seahawks are hard to like | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Enjoy, whoever you're rooting for.

He Isn't
 

Belechick is not a Vince Lombardi who would not stoop so low as to cheat. He did tell his players that they should never help another player up but rather let them use their own strength to use up energy. That was what real coaches do, they don't try to cheat to win and he surly won games. In most places if you get caught cheating you are never allowed back and he was absolutely caught cheating in "spy gate". At that point he should have been banned for life from the game but it has become so crooked that people like him can continue to be what they are and coach or play. There are fans that never see evil but rationalize the violations to be something they are not. Anybody that doesn't believe a deflated ball could impact the game has never played football, anybody who doesn't know that an NFL QB could tell if a football is underinflated does not know football, anybody who thinks the coach does not know everything about the players and quipment does not know football, anybody who thinks that some players and coaches don't put money ahead of morals does not know pro football. The same goes on in the French Bike race, Major Leage Baseball, yes and Golf, and basketball,
what makes some think football is different and that a Belechick or Brady is above being like the other sports that had/have cheaters? :mornincoffee:

Aha! Now we learn the truth.

I read this article this morning and found it to be interesting.

A couple of interesting articles as new information is beginning to come out.

» Who Exactly Is Mike Kensil? AKA – The Ringleader of Deflategate Barstool Sports: Boston


Some Reporters Wonder If Patriots’ DeflateGate Was NFL Sting Operation | New England Patriots | NESN.com

New england cheaters
 

Excellent articles Doc. Thanks for the research. The haters will continue to hate (jealous as they are) and we can start chillin in order to be ready for the Game.

Go Pats!

Call Names
 

There is an old debating statement. When you don't have the facts call names. I have intentionally avoided labeling anyone as a hater,etc. I have noted that there are indicators as to the quality of knowledge regarding football. I kind of feel I have a pretty good knowledge on the subject. That knowlege has led me to believe that prior behavior, (e.g. cheating), and current behavior, (e.g. deflated footballs directly associated with the Patriots) is not an accident of fate but rather a pretty strong indicator of a team that lost its moral compass. It takes a strong rationale to believe these are just accidents even though no other team has 2+ cheating like accidents in their relative current history. Lest we forget the Raven's noted the problem after their game and before the game balls in question. I will leave this alone but did not want to leave the impression that I would allow any of my own behavior waste energy in hating a group of professional millionare players. Now that would really be stupid! :mornincoffee:

I was a debater. Another saying was: if you don't know the facts, make them up.

Interesting that in the same breath accuse people of calling names and then call people who root for or against their football team stupid.

I get it though. You are better and smarter than the rest of us. You are above rooting for sports teams and have no interest in "millionaire players." I really get that.

What I don't get is why someone that has no interest in this continues to respond to this thread.

Doc, Who are you rooting for? Just kidding.

Behavior
 

Actually the behavior of some regarding a Professional team and behavior is what is interesting. Lets start by being objective. We know that most if not all of the players are not from Boston or Mass. and probanly some have never even visited Boston. We know they are very skilled in their chosen profession of football. We know that most have graduated from different Colleges. Based on this the only rationale conclusion is that it makes sense to cheer for a team because a person believes they are better skilled in their positions/play. What then becomes behavior of interest is why some feel the need to identify the team with a particular city or state and go to extremes to defend the team's association with these locations. My interest in the subject is not to defend a team based on location but rather skill. The behavior observation is to be able to see how far some will go to apply their anger and ggressiveness in defending a city or state based on a team which really has nothing to do with locations. In some of these notes there are really interesting behaviors relative to rationaling the Patriots cheating in order to protect the city or state reputation. I find this to be the most interesting. I certaintly don't hold Boston or Mass at all responsible for the Patriots cheating. Now that would be silly. :cold:

Welcome to the "information Age"

Rather than facts ,figure and research the Media spins their opinion on what direction their opinions are. Rather than report significant events (World leaders passing, tragedies happening, Economies collapsing) the major media screams about the inflated properties of a ball! This was top three news story for entire week!

It was ashamed that was the top story of the week and the gullible take it hook, line, and sinker. It's what the media's come too.::024:

The Patriots are the only NFL team that represent an entire region of the country, not only a city or a state. They are the New England Patriots, not the Boston Patriots or the Massachusetts Patriots. They represent the entire New England area. Don't know what your point is exactly.

OOp's
 

Oop's. Sorry just replace where I mentioned Boston or Mass with north eastern United States. The change has no impact on what I wrote as the same applies. Again, we go from identifying the team with a city or state to a general location in the US. The behavior is the same just the size of the area or acre's. I will not go further in clarifying as it would be kind of obvious and difficult as to why it needs further clarification?? There are a number of books on the subject which are no only informative but rewarding to read.:cold:

Can't wait for the game. So much BS on this site. Hopefully after the game everyone can go back to their fun life!

190 Blogs should be enough to call for a vote, or else go on with life.

I think we all get it. You are calm, rational and more intelligent than most people. I think that we all get that. You don't have to try to prove it any longer.

all about air in a football that not many know anything about the subject....not that anybody cared.....or cares.....it is another media circus.....while everybody else that foes the same thing merrily goes about the business of footballing (?).

If there were 100 footbals and half of them were one pound less than the rest I would be willing to bet there would be very, very few...if any....who could pick them up put them down and ID which is which. And nobody would care.
Just like the story.

The soft footballs and the winter weather have been consuming more than 60% of the national news. I think it is a conspiracy to take our minds off the real problems in the world......politics and media as usual....

just kidding....:icon_wink:

And now I want to know who gave Brady a cold? PennBF? ::jester::

Retired Pro Bowl quarterback Jeff Blake says that removing air from footballs was common when he played in the NFL from 1992-2005.

“I’m just going to let the cat of the bag, every team does it, every game, it has been since I played,” the ex-Jets QB said Wednesday in a radio interview on the “Midday 180″ show on Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone. “Cause when you take the balls out of the bag, they are rock hard. And you can’t feel the ball as well. It’s too hard.

“Everybody puts the pin in and takes just enough air out of the ball that you can feel it a little better. But it’s not the point to where it’s flat. So I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s not something that’s not been done for 20 years. … I would say (to a ball boy), ‘Take a little bit of air out of it. It’s a little bit hard,'” Blake said. “And then he’d take a little bit out and I’d squeeze it and I’d be like, ‘OK, it’s perfect.’ That’s it.”

Oh dear Lord. This is a scandal I don’t think we’ll ever recover from.

I mean, the air pressure inside eleven footballs during one half of a blowout football game has been the biggest story of 2015. So this ought to rock America to it’s very foundation. Apparently football pressure integrity is one of the pillars of our republic. Written into the Constitution somewhere between free speech and right to a jury trial.

So the fact that NFL quarterbacks have been letting the air out of balls since Tom Brady was wearing Garanimals just gives lie to everything we stand for. Forget Watergate or Teapot Dome or the 1919 Black Sox. This is the kind of crisis that gives lie to everything you ever believed in. Once you’ve lost faith in your ability to believe in the sanctity of “12.5-to-14.5 PSI,” how can you trust anything ever again?

We might as well just take all the Lombardi trophies won over the last twenty years and just melt them down into asterisks, disband every NFL team, raze all the stadiums, close down civilization and go move back to the forest because our whole lives have been a lie. This is exactly what the Fall of Rome must have felt like.* Oh well, America. It was fun while it lasted.

New england cheaters
 

Your astute analysis will undoubtedly lead to a major decline in the financial markets. Well done; Go Pats.

Football is obviously done before the SuperBowl. Looking forward to the Red Sox first training season game?

Close call when the Pats landed in Arizona. Someone deflated the tires on their plane.

CSI Deflate-gate is found to be trash talk to Seattle Seahawks. End of story.

How The NFL Made a Fool of You With "Deflategate"

If you are a football fan that feels as though the Patriots have hurt the integrity of your precious sport with the PSI of a game ball, or a member of the media who took to your laptops and the airwaves to editorialize your distrust of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and Bob Kraft, then you should be mad right now; because the NFL played you like a fiddle.*

*They made a mockery of you. They dangled the bait in front of you and you snapped it up so quickly and with so much vigor that they haven’t even had to come out and speak to you and answer your questions; because you haven’t even asked them to.

And they knew that you wouldn’t.

They dared you to inundate an entire team of athletes and personnel with accusations based on your lingering distrust of Bill Belichick post-SpyGate; distrust that constantly leaves you calling for his resignation and/or the confiscation of his Super Bowl rings despite the fact that you have failed to exhibit the same vitriol for the also-highly-decorated Jimmy Johnson who admitted to doing the same exact thing.

You went on the radio and the internet and TV and indicted the Patriots based on nothing other than a couple of flimsy reports and an announcement of an investigation. You did that knowing that despite it being enough of a story that Belichick and Brady were at the podium talking to you about it, the NFL had inexplicably failed to even have a conversation with Brady yet. You did that knowing that this is the same exact league and Commissioner whose credibility you’d spent most of the season dismantling.

You wanted and needed so badly to believe that the Patriots couldn’t possibly be the dynasty that has reigned supreme over the last fourteen years that you gave the NFL the benefit of the doubt.

The league that tried to cover up their knowledge of a video of Ray Rice knocking his fiancé unconscious with a punch to the face, then had their Commissioner stand up in front of you and dare you to try to make him pay any consequences for it.

The league that, in the interest of financial gain, ignored and covered up the brutal health implications of playing for them until a beloved Hall of Fame linebacker killed himself and donated his brain to science in the hopes that it may save the lives of other players.

Why has it not also been shoved down your throats that they’re investigating the Browns for illegal use of electronic devices for sideline communication, or that the Chargers were fined in 2012 for cheating through illegal use of towels with a hidden substance? Where was the viral outrage when the Cowboys and Redskins were fined millions in cap dollars after being found guilty of purposely dumping salaries into the uncapped year in 2010?*

*Wait, you will love this one. Why didn’t the NFL deem it necessary to make quarterbacks and coaches speak to their accountability and respect for the integrity of the game when just TWO MONTHS AGO they caught the Vikings heating game balls on the sideline in a 12-degree game against the Panthers after they supposedly reminded both teams that it was illegal to do so? (Full credit and big thanks to*Pats Krieg for compiling these.)

The NFL’s brilliant leaking of a “possible” Patriots scandal was enough to incite such a frenzy that you immediately repudiated the trustworthiness of Brady; one of the NFL’s pillars of sportsmanship and someone who has never previously been accused of being a cheater (or drug-user or rapist or animal endangerer or criminal of any kind). Not only did you question him but you attacked him. With nearly no provocation and armed with only a vague statement from an NFL spokesperson and unofficial reports from other sources, you labeled Brady a liar and a cheater.

After he told you that he didn’t do anything wrong and stood and answered your questions for 35 minutes, you came on television and arrogantly rattled on about “disappointment” in him; disappointment based on the inflation level of game balls that almost every single current and former player agrees is a non-issue. That consensus is further backed up by the lack of outrage when the aforementioned ball-tampering in Minnesota popped up in November of 2014.

Aaron Rodgers admitted that he hopes his purposely over-inflated balls sneak by the referees’ inspection, and you dismissed that as not cheating. Because you know that the pressure of the balls does not win you NFL games. You aren’t mad about deflation or inflation; you just want to hate the Patriots.*

The problem is that if you do think that the Patriots benefit from ball pressure, then Rodgers just told you that he does too. You’re not going to start a war against Rodgers, so you make it about principle. It’s “the principle” of the matter.

Okay. That’s what they were figuring you would do.

So now we are nine days into this thing while fast approaching the Super Bowl, and the NFL has not even had to come out and actually call the Patriots cheaters. Nor have they addressed the issue directly to the media or the public. A spokesperson confirmed that there was an investigation. Then five days ago the NFL released a statement that took three paragraphs to say exactly what the spokesperson had confirmed: that they are investigating. The only notable addition was to note that the Patriots are cooperating fully with said investigation as well as a particularly preposterous paragraph in which they explain the reconnaissance mission in terms more suited for the script of an episode of CSI.

The fact that you so willingly fell into this trap is a testament to just how much power the NFL has over you. They handed you the narrative that they knew you wanted. They figured they could solve the “indignity” that the league had suffered at the hands of the mighty cheating Patriots by throwing the book*at the "bad guys”. They’d even do it to Bob Kraft to show you how they don’t play favorites.

What better way to help solve an image issue than align yourself with the masses against a common enemy? Bravo to Goodell.*He "cracked down" on cheating without further angering any of the NFL owners that already don't like him.

You bought it hook, line and sinker because you're under the delusion that your team is all clear eyes-full hearts and has somehow been victimized by this. It is one thing to buy into a perfectly timed PR stunt. It’s another thing entirely to fall into the ignorant space between conspiracy and reality that*enables you to continuously denounce the NFL and its most successful franchise as cheaters and liars, yet still voraciously consume their product that they've pitted you against.*

The only way that this league will change for the better is if you stop letting the NFL take you for such fools.*

There are no cheaters. It was just trash talk against Seattle to get them riled. Just like saying Brady has a cold.