Deflategate penalties announced

What will be even more amazing is when Greg Hardy has his suspension lowered to 6 games (which is what I've heard should happen once arbitration completes), a SB winning QB who may have asked for footballs to be slightly underinflated will be punished nearly as harshly as a multi-time beater of women.

Only in the NFL.

2 games is good for Ray Rice beating his wife.

4 games is good for maybe breaking an arbitrary rule that has never been enforced and nobody cares (nor should care) about.

Great priorities, guys.

Good lord. Have the refs supply the game balls if it's that big of a fucking deal. Not that that will happen of course, because the NFL doesn't care about the actual rules as much as they do pandering to public opinion. Good grief...

to see my first Brady to Devin TD!

So I don't actually mind some sort of punishment.  My question is how Bill doesn't get suspended at all?  The picks/fines affects the Kraft familyand Bill's ability to draft players he needs.   He's probably retiring as soon as Tom is.  How is he absolved of this?

What I haven't heard much around here (and maybe because I heard wrong) is that John Harbaugh was mad about those crazy alignments the Pats used to gain an edge on the Ravens, so he called Pagano about the Patriots deflating the balls and told him to check it out and make a fuss.  So we can sort of thank John for deflategate?

The NFL gets more idiotic with every passing year.

brilliant? While most of us see the absurdity in this situation, the NFL is front page in the off season. And their position is "integrity of the game" and somehow validating the "parity if the NFL" only because the most dominant franchise supposedly cheated. And most people stop talking about Hardy, Rice, Peterson, and other miscreants employed by the league.

Just realized I've been under-inflating my car's tires for years. MY WHOLE DRIVING CAREER IS A LIE.

4 games for being "probably generally aware" of under inflated footballs. Well done NFL, well done.

What a joke

@ReformedBroker Tom Brady suspended four games, or a month of lazy Sundays in bed with a supermodel.

I find this silly. The referees handle the ball every play of every game. So they must have been aware of the deflated balls. What is their penalty for not doing something about it?

Did I miss that the NFL hired Mark Emmert to head up the discipline committee?

So, NFL, what you're saying is:

footballs >> women's safety

Is going to stew on this for 4 games, then unleash hell on the NFL, win out, hoist the Super Bowl MVP trophy again, and give a titty twister to Goodell during the post Super Bowl celebration.

Thank you NFL for giving Tom a reason to destroy you.

This is stupid. NFL commissioner is a joke. If all it takes is a secret report to fine and suspend someone, then I guess the same should be done by the teams to the commissioner for his sorry ass lying. The guy is a criminal in how he handled Ray Rice's case. Now he wants to fine someone a million dollars for a stupid air in the ball? I didn't watch NFL last year until the SuperBowl. I will continue that. 4 game suspension to Brady? How about a 2 year ban on the commissioner for the way he handled the Ray Rice case. How about that. Hypocrite.

Aaron Rodgers openly admits to breaking the rule: no investigation. Ditto with the Seahawks chronic contact-rule violations. Jackie MacMullen at ESPN tears the the NFL apart for the appalling disconnect relative to their reaction to violent crimes, especially crimes against women.

The reason Brady was suspended 4 games is because of the Patriots' opponent in their 5th game. Imagine the TV ratings...

And Brady wasn't asked to hand over his phone. He was asked to choose what texts were relevant and print them up for the investigators, and they would trust his judgment about what was relevant. He declined to do even that much.