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Sports

Deflategate Has Never Been About Science

Just ask this scientician!

Tom Brady will finally have plenty of evidence to bring with him when he has his day in NFL court next week regarding Deflategate. In the weeks since the NFL released the Wells Report, everyone ranging from scientists to scienticians has weighed in about the science behind deflated footballs. Seriously. So much science. I barely even know where to begin with all the science.

What has all this science gotten us? Lots of qualifiers:

  • "Scientists find Belichick's explanation plausible"
  • "Deflation Experiments Show Patriots May Have a Point After All"
  • "Two scientists say that 'deflate-gate' isn't entirely hot air."
  • "thermodynamics alone can't get the Patriots off the hook."

All of this science-ing implicitly legitimizes an entirely NFL fabricated scandal. As long as we talk about the Ideal Gas Law—which most sports writers seem to believe is some kind of incomprehensible quantum theory, not high school chemistry—we're not talking about the only thing all of those articles agree on: that at most it would have most made a minimal difference.

Given that the hearing next week is an appeal in which Goodell gets to decide if Goodell made the right decision in whether or not Goodell's suspension was correct, it seems unlikely Goodell will rule against Goodell.

It's irrelevant to debate the science about this controversy, since Deflategate was never about that anyway. Science, the actual process of observing controlled experiments to test hypotheses, is much too dignified a process to be in any way associated with Roger Goodell's warped sense of justice. This has always been about Goodell rebranding himself as the purveyor of harsh law after floundering in the public eye nine months ago following the Ray Rice debacle, just as Bountygate was Goodell's counter-programming to the burgeoning head trauma epidemic. The reason Roger Goodell will find next week that Roger Goodell made the right decision is because Deflategate is about one thing: Roger Goodell.