[milkmanjoe]

Originally Posted by Snipersnest

MilkmanJoe, typical New England answer? Not really. Although I don't have any love for the eggheads at Harvard, what they said makes sense. My buddy has an inflatable dinghy, that has to be pumped up when he floats it on colder water because it loses pressure, so the theory makes sense to me. Let's face it, cheating is not a rarity in professional sports. Where was the indignation with the Green Bay Packers when Aaron Rogers openly said he likes his game ball over-inflated? How about all the thrown penalty flags this season that were later said to not be a penalty? If you threw a flag you must have seen something. Does that mean the fix is in? I don't enjoy to watch football anymore ever since Vick and his dog fighting days, and the NFL took him back and the wife/girlfriend beaters and the child beaters. My opinion is that the deflategate crap is a ploy to just get inside the heads of the Patriots, and as you know, opinions are like a$$holes, everyone has one, and they all stink.

Yes, typical New England answer. I maintain friendships in Boston and Billerica from when I lived there..."Patriot Nation" is no different that any other city with professional sports, except the football coach is known for his win at all costs way of play. And spying on other teams. And no team or person, in my world, is exempt from scrutiny for any sort of cheating, especially if it affects masses of people. People who know me personally know that I live and work to high standards. I attribute my lifestyle to living with dignity my whole life. If Belichick and Brady were able to give coherent press releases I might think this was a mistake, but they cannot and I will not. Depending on the poll, between 72% and 76% of Americans believe the Patriots cheated. Of course people from the northeast are the 24% to 28% who believe the Patriots didn't cheat. This leads me to believe many people in the northeast are either too stupid to differentiate between cheating or they have values so low they will stand by their team in spite of facts presented.

Originally Posted by DrHenley

I think this is a media created tempest in a teapot. Do y'all really believe everything you hear on TV?

A few facts...

1. Brady said that he likes the balls inflated to the minimum pressure, 12.5 PSI
2. In tests, balls that were inflated to 12.5 PSI initially, tested 11 PSI after exposure to cold weather. (underpressure)
3. There are reports that the Colts balls were also tested and found to be still within limits, but there have been no official statements by the League to that effect.
4. Despite what you have read and heard, D'Qwell Jackson DID NOT suspect that the ball he intercepted and kept was underpressure - In his own words:
   • "I wanted that ball as a souvenir!"
   • "I wouldn't know how that could even be an advantage or a disadvantage."
   • "I definitely wouldn't be able to tell if one ball had less pressure than another."
   • "It wouldn't have changed the outcome of the game. They outplayed us. We didn't match their intensity. I don't feel slighted at all personally. They created turnovers, they ran the ball on us. They won that game because of their intensity -- not the pressure of a football."
   • Jackson also said that late in the first half, he noticed that the Patriots were actually using the Colts' footballs because they couldn't find a "usable ball."

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap300...-less-pressure

Jackson did turn the ball in, which was the headline for two days, and is why the balls were tested at halftime. Of course the stories have changed as the week progressed, this is about money, not moral standards. The NFL will in no way make any rulings before the Superbowl. Hell, from CNN to ESPN to FOX, they were all saying that Monday morning. The storyline has been manipulated multiple times since last Sunday, and will continue to change right up until gameday. On Monday the NFL stated that 11 or 24 footballs tested were under-inflated, and those footballs were used by the Patriots. Now you say the NFL has no testing on the footballs used by the Colts. If you let the changing storyline fool you I don't mind, I don't let it fool me. It was 11 of 12 footballs, they were Patriots game footballs, and the other twelve, utilized by the Colts, were inflated properly. That's what happened.