Author Topic: #DeflateGate (Court of Appeals Reinstates Suspension)  (Read 594017 times)

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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1860 on: July 30, 2015, 07:56:16 PM »

Offline Granath

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All fabulous points. And still people are hung up on the Brady phone thing, but somehow miss the fact that if Brady told Jastremski and McNally to deflate the balls via text or email, they would have already seen these messages on J and M's phones.

And if they are really trying to see what Brady may have said to other people, it's just preposterous. Imagine you got in trouble at work and your employer wanted to see your non work phone and read messages to non work people?

I really hope that not only does Brady win, but that this leads to the end of Roger Goodell's tenure:

Actually, the points are irrelevant. Even if Brady was 100% innocent - and that is quite hard to believe with the evidence against him - he could still be suspended for not cooperating. Destroying his phone is exceptionally powerful evidence of that, even if the New England Echo Chamber wants to try to excuse that with the same feeble excuses they've used for dismissing all of the other evidence.

Now a corporation cannot force you to turn over private messages. For one the NFL does not have subpena power so Brady is under no obligation from the law to give over his phone which, is a good thing. A corporation should not have that power.

What a corporation can do is assume the worst if you don’t cooperate and issue punishments based on that worst assumptions. You may be asked to take a drug test because the company suspects you of being high on the job. You may refuse, which is your right. But then the company can then fire you because they can assume that since you wouldn’t take a drug test you probably had been using some illicit drugs. If IBM was accusing me of sharing trade secrets with Toshiba, they could request to see my phone, if I didn’t comply, they have the right to fire me in most states.

No player has ever been suspended for not cooperating with an investigation, in fact the former commissioner vacated an pensltys enforced against saints players  for not cooperating because it was not inline with the cba

Additionally what evidence is there that Brady did anything,  I have yet to see any

There's 120+ pages in this thread. There's 243 pages in the Wells report. If you have yet to see any evidence that's because you refuse to see any. As such, it would be futile to rehash the factual and circumstantial evidence surrounding this case.
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1861 on: July 30, 2015, 08:09:58 PM »

Offline Rondo2287

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All fabulous points. And still people are hung up on the Brady phone thing, but somehow miss the fact that if Brady told Jastremski and McNally to deflate the balls via text or email, they would have already seen these messages on J and M's phones.

And if they are really trying to see what Brady may have said to other people, it's just preposterous. Imagine you got in trouble at work and your employer wanted to see your non work phone and read messages to non work people?

I really hope that not only does Brady win, but that this leads to the end of Roger Goodell's tenure:

Actually, the points are irrelevant. Even if Brady was 100% innocent - and that is quite hard to believe with the evidence against him - he could still be suspended for not cooperating. Destroying his phone is exceptionally powerful evidence of that, even if the New England Echo Chamber wants to try to excuse that with the same feeble excuses they've used for dismissing all of the other evidence.

Now a corporation cannot force you to turn over private messages. For one the NFL does not have subpena power so Brady is under no obligation from the law to give over his phone which, is a good thing. A corporation should not have that power.

What a corporation can do is assume the worst if you don’t cooperate and issue punishments based on that worst assumptions. You may be asked to take a drug test because the company suspects you of being high on the job. You may refuse, which is your right. But then the company can then fire you because they can assume that since you wouldn’t take a drug test you probably had been using some illicit drugs. If IBM was accusing me of sharing trade secrets with Toshiba, they could request to see my phone, if I didn’t comply, they have the right to fire me in most states.

No player has ever been suspended for not cooperating with an investigation, in fact the former commissioner vacated an pensltys enforced against saints players  for not cooperating because it was not inline with the cba

Additionally what evidence is there that Brady did anything,  I have yet to see any

There's 120+ pages in this thread. There's 243 pages in the Wells report. If you have yet to see any evidence that's because you refuse to see any. As such, it would be futile to rehash the factual and circumstantial evidence surrounding this case.

Nope it's because I actually have read everything including both court filings and the report cover to back.  I suggest you do the same.  He devil is in the details, regardless of he nfl wanting to reduce it to headlines
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1862 on: July 30, 2015, 08:14:20 PM »

Offline Granath

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Additionally, as has been pointed out, the NFL isn't Brady's employer, the Patriots are.  Goodell is an employee of the owners who can be fired by them. So this complicates things further since Kraft certainly isn't asking for the phone.

Come on. Seriously, this is your argument? You don't think Brady signed and must follow the collective bargaining agreement and the NFL code of conduct which gives the NFL the right to adjudicate such cases? I understand that there are many homers here, but this line of thinking is absurd. Goodell has 100% the right and duty to adjudicate these types of cases. As such, there is no "complication".

Quote
Moreover, what gets lost in all of this is that the NFL doesn't even have evidence that the balls were even deflated. So it'd be like a company forcing you to have a drug test about an accident at your work that they just think may have happened, but they have no evidence of. And that would lose in a court of law unless the company had a random drug testing policy for all employees, but that would mean that the NFL would have to see every employees phone periodically, including Roger Goodell.

Only on New England sports websites would anyone say the NFL doesn't have "evidence". The evidence may be mostly circumstantial, but there is evidence. This isn't an anti-Patriots witch hunt/conspiracy, despite that common sentiment around here.

Finally, in most states a company would have the right to require a drug test if they suspected an accident and/or an employee being under the influence. So long as the belief was reasonable - even if it was not true - they could easily require this. Such laws differ from State to State (for example, this would NOT be legal in California), but you may be surprised how few rights you have as an employee in muchy of the country. And, of course, this too is an irrelevant line of thinking because it's going to be the CBA/CoC that dictates the actions that may be taken. It's really that simple.

Brady's only hope is to prove that the hearing was arbitrary and/or capricious. That could include a lack of time to prepare, a failure to have witnesses called and so forth. But I think he's going to have a very difficult time trying to prove this.
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1863 on: July 30, 2015, 08:21:48 PM »

Offline Granath

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Nope it's because I actually have read everything including both court filings and the report cover to back.  I suggest you do the same.  He devil is in the details, regardless of he nfl wanting to reduce it to headlines.

And you and other Patriots fans have interpreted it the way you (plural) wanted. I've seen those interpretations in this thread. They're quite amusing.

Evidence is that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.

If you have yet to see any - as per your assertion - then you simply don't understand the word. You may not believe such evidence; you may think that the evidence gathered is sufficient enough to warrant the punishment; you may be swayed by other evidence that refutes the assertions in the Wells report; but in the end there is evidence - a considerable amount in fact -  that the Patriots and Tom Brady conspired to cheat by deflating footballs.

I'm a New England sports fan. But I also believe in playing by the rules. I think the preponderance of the evidence suggest that the Patriots didn't play by the rules and quite possibly "won" another tainted Super Bowl because they cheated (again). At this point, the Patriots can enjoy the rings but history will always remember that they were "won" because they were cheating (hence the quotes). That's sad. What's worse is that I find the excuses made by the fans just as sad. The ends do not justify the means.

Now, back to the points at hand. I said that Kraft would accept his penalty. He did. I said Brady would get suspended. He did. Now I am saying I think Brady will lose in court. And should he do so, I think that will reflect poorly on his legacy. He could have meekly taken the penalty without admitting his guilt and he probably would have had his penalty reduced to two games. He would have gotten a pass for just being a team player and "taking one for the team". This saga would be over and done with. And frankly with a weak AFC East the Patriots could have gotten by without him for two games. But by fighting this, he creates a disruption for the team and uncertainty going into the season. Should he lose - which I think is the more likely scenario - he hurts the team and his own legacy far worse than he would have otherwise. If Brady loses in court, the Patriots start out 1-3 and end up missing the playoffs at 9-7 or 10-6, his image in Boston will never be the same.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 08:35:59 PM by Granath »
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1864 on: July 30, 2015, 08:37:44 PM »

Offline Roy H.

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Quote
And still people are hung up on the Brady phone thing, but somehow miss the fact that if Brady told Jastremski and McNally to deflate the balls via text or email, they would have already seen these messages on J and M's phones.

Did they do a full forensic analysis on J's and M's phones to see if messages were deleted, etc.? 


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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1865 on: July 30, 2015, 08:55:07 PM »

Offline PhoSita

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There's 120+ pages in this thread. There's 243 pages in the Wells report. If you have yet to see any evidence that's because you refuse to see any. As such, it would be futile to rehash the factual and circumstantial evidence surrounding this case.

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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1866 on: July 30, 2015, 08:59:56 PM »

Offline PhoSita

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Except there is. Some Patriots fans like to throw out words like "unprecedented" when it's clearly not.



Name me a single instance of a player being suspended for failure to cooperate with a league investigation, or "general awareness"of misconduct by other people in his organization.

What's more, point to the specific rule that Brady has supposedly violated due to his supposed "failure to cooperate" and his "general awareness" of wrongdoing.

I think you'll find that there is no specific language in the CBA to describe the conduct for which Brady is being punished.  That's a problem for the league, because a disciplinary decision has to be based upon the essence of the CBA, otherwise the players didn't really ever agree to be bound in that way and the league has no power to enforce it.
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1867 on: July 30, 2015, 10:02:48 PM »

Offline BballTim

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Except there is. Some Patriots fans like to throw out words like "unprecedented" when it's clearly not.



Name me a single instance of a player being suspended for failure to cooperate with a league investigation, or "general awareness"of misconduct by other people in his organization.

What's more, point to the specific rule that Brady has supposedly violated due to his supposed "failure to cooperate" and his "general awareness" of wrongdoing.

I think you'll find that there is no specific language in the CBA to describe the conduct for which Brady is being punished.  That's a problem for the league, because a disciplinary decision has to be based upon the essence of the CBA, otherwise the players didn't really ever agree to be bound in that way and the league has no power to enforce it.

  If there's no possible punishment for not cooperating with an investigation, why would anyone ever cooperate with one? Why wouldn't Kraft have just told everyone associated with the team to ignore any queries into deflategate if there was no penalty for doing so? Isn't he smart enough to think of things like that?

Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1868 on: July 30, 2015, 10:03:52 PM »

Offline Fan from VT

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https://nflpaweb.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/PDFs/Media%20Resources/7.29.15%20petition%20to%20vacate.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/the-nfls-basic-due-process-is-the-real-issue-in-the-deflategate-controversy/2015/07/30/ebda3b02-3666-11e5-9d0f-7865a67390ee_story.html


http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/07/28/brady-offered-to-help-nfl-gather-missing-text-messages/


Heres a few good reads for anyone posting in this thread.

There are many problems with the deflategate report.

In terms of the court of public opinion, It all starts with the "loaded question" logical fallicy. The very first question should have been 1. "were the balls deflated." If yes, the next question should have been 2. "were the balls deflated naturally, accidentally, or intentionally." If intentionally, then "3.  Who did the deflating, and how." Then 4. "why, at whose direction."

Unfortunately, it is utterly obvious that in the public discourse, the very first question asked was "who illegally deflated the balls for Brady?" If that is the first question asked, it is nearly impossie for the average person to have a rational debate about it.

In terms of the questions above:
1. Probably deflated.
However, as even the scientific firm who concluded that the balls were deflated acknowledges in a footnote of the Wells report, their findings are based on several assumptions, and changing any of the assumptions would nullify their conclusions. Additionally, the new ball security rules clearly show that there was never any way to determine dedlation since there was never any protocol for recording the ball pressures in a standardized way or recording the factors that would affect ball pressure (room temp, game temp, humidity, whose balls you measure first when you bring them back into a warm room; the balls measured last will warm up more and read higher pressures.) additionally, also glossed over in the Wells report, the ref thought that he used a particular gauge at halftime. If you use that gauge's halftime measurements, the average PSI is legal. So even this basic initial fundamental question is actually mot firm.

2. If deflated, probably natural. Several random people, from scientists to students, have performed experiments and mathematics to show that the pats balls decreased by an expected amount. As above, even the company hired by the nfl stated that their findings rested upon many assumptions, wgich, if any were wrong, could change their conclusions. Furthermore, it became clear that the NFL:
1. Had no standard by which to test balls mid game.
2. Had no rules or even thoughts regarding natural pressure deflation during game conditions, only rules about the pre game weigh in parameters.

3+4. From the above two questions, it never should have progressed to this question. But even so, the question was not "did someone deflate the balls and if so, who?", the question was "how did these guys deflate the balls for brady?" Once you look at the evidence from that perspective, every small thing becomes proof to fit that conclusion, despite any alternative explanations. None of the texts, if you read without knowing about deflategate, would lead you to say "hey, these guys are talking about deflating game balls because Brady wants them to!" The huge elephant in the room is actually, given the number of texts, the incredible LACK of texts mentioning any plot to deflate footballs for Brady, let alone
Brady's awareness of a plot.



Next is the CBA requirement for consistent punishment. When there is a rule in place with a penalty, say steroids, history shows that you get penalty regardless of if you deny using or admit it, or try to hide it. Suspension for lack of cooperation (after, as we are finding out, Wells told Brady he had cooperated enough) is unprecedented. The severity is unprecedented.

Also in terms of consistency, which IS required:
- Rodgers commented he likes illegally overinflated balls. No team penalty, no player penalty, no investigation.
- Jets kicker fiasco mentioned in one of the above articles: minor fine, kicker not held responsible for actions of team employee.
- ball warming incident: minor or no fine, i forget, no investigation.

Finally, the CBA has a penalty for various illegal equipment infractions on the books: small fine. By the cba, this is what should have been assigned as punishment, if anything.



Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1869 on: July 30, 2015, 10:17:01 PM »

Offline colincb

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Additionally, as has been pointed out, the NFL isn't Brady's employer, the Patriots are. Goodell is an employee of the owners who can be fired by them. So this complicates things further since Kraft certainly isn't asking for the phone.

Come on. Seriously, this is your argument? You don't think Brady signed and must follow the collective bargaining agreement and the NFL code of conduct which gives the NFL the right to adjudicate such cases? I understand that there are many homers here, but this line of thinking is absurd. Goodell has 100% the right and duty to adjudicate these types of cases. As such, there is no "complication".

Quote
Moreover, what gets lost in all of this is that the NFL doesn't even have evidence that the balls were even deflated. So it'd be like a company forcing you to have a drug test about an accident at your work that they just think may have happened, but they have no evidence of. And that would lose in a court of law unless the company had a random drug testing policy for all employees, but that would mean that the NFL would have to see every employees phone periodically, including Roger Goodell.

Only on New England sports websites would anyone say the NFL doesn't have "evidence". The evidence may be mostly circumstantial, but there is evidence. This isn't an anti-Patriots witch hunt/conspiracy, despite that common sentiment around here.

Finally, in most states a company would have the right to require a drug test if they suspected an accident and/or an employee being under the influence. So long as the belief was reasonable - even if it was not true - they could easily require this. Such laws differ from State to State (for example, this would NOT be legal in California), but you may be surprised how few rights you have as an employee in muchy of the country. And, of course, this too is an irrelevant line of thinking because it's going to be the CBA/CoC that dictates the actions that may be taken. It's really that simple.

Brady's only hope is to prove that the hearing was arbitrary and/or capricious. That could include a lack of time to prepare, a failure to have witnesses called and so forth. But I think he's going to have a very difficult time trying to prove this.

Given your legal expertise as far as evidence and arbitration, what if the union claims that Goodell is not independent, does the court ignore that argument?   I wonder if the recent Missouri SC ruling against the NFL on arbitration might foreshadow the unions attack here. It is curious that Goodell appointed independent arbitrators in the past for Peterson and Rice, but not now. One of those arbitration cases got overruled in federal court as I recall. Anyway I wonder if you will talk to the Brady case in light of the Missouri ruling. I know Florio's a lawyer and all, but you're here and he's not, so maybe we can pick your brain since you seem to think Goodell has an absolute right to adjudicate.

Quote
Missouri Supreme Court invalidates Commissioner as arbitrator
Posted by Mike Florio on May 5, 2015, 11:24 PM EDT
Goodell AP

When it comes to employment disputes involving individuals teams, the NFL traditionally stacks the deck in its favor, forcing disgruntled employees to agree to arbitration — with the Commissioner of the league presiding. Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court delivered what could become a fatal blow to the league’s obsession with allowing a non-lawyer to make legal decisions that could be influenced by business interests unrelated to what the law requires.

In a lawsuit filed more than four years ago by former Rams equipment manager Todd Hewitt, the Missouri Supreme Court invalidated the requirement of submitting all claims to arbitration resolved by the Commissioner. The Missouri Supreme Court based its conclusion in part on a fairly simply analysis of three provisions of the league’s Constitution and Bylaws.

First, the Court pointed out that Section 8.3 gives the Commissioner “full, complete, and final jurisdiction and authority to arbitrate . . . [a]ny dispute between any player, coach, and/or other employee of any member of the League and any member club or clubs.” Next, the Court pointed out that Section 8.1 requires the NFL to “select and employ a person of unquestioned integrity to serve as Commissioner of the League and shall determine the period and fix the compensation of his employment.” Then, the Court pointed out that Section 8.2 states that the “Commissioner shall have no financial interest, direct or indirect, in any professional sport.”

The provisions are clearly inconsistent; it’s impossible for the Commissioner to have “no financial interest” in “any professional sport” when he is paid by the league — and when the bulk of his compensation often comes from bonuses tied to the financial success of the league. More importantly, the Missouri Supreme Court concluded that the conflicting provisions and obvious bias of the Commissioner when “required to arbitrate claims against his employers” makes the requirement that employees submit claims to arbitration resolved by the Commissioner unenforceable.

While narrow in application to the State of Missouri (which serves as the home of two NFL teams, the Rams and Chiefs), the ruling provides a blueprint for employees who hope to avoid Commissioner-resolved arbitration in the other 21 states in which the NFL does business. It also gives the NFL Players Association and the NFL Referees Association a potential hammer for challenging in court the ability of the Commissioner to continue to serve as the arbitrator over claims brought by players and game officials, respectively.

While those provisions likely will have greater teeth because they appear in Collective Bargaining Agreements, the three provisions quoted by the Missouri Supreme Court from the NFL’s Constitution and Bylaws lay the foundation for a case-by-case attack on arbitration submitted to the Commissioner based on the inherent bias of the Commissioner.

It’s an obvious problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades. At some point, the unions, the courts, and/or the NFL itself need to acknowledge that the Commissioner necessarily is incapable of being objective when resolving disputes involving the very teams that hire and pay him, and to come up with a more fair and unbiased procedure for resolving disputes.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/05/05/missouri-supreme-court-invalidates-commissioner-as-arbitrator/

Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1870 on: July 30, 2015, 10:25:39 PM »

Offline kozlodoev

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And still people are hung up on the Brady phone thing, but somehow miss the fact that if Brady told Jastremski and McNally to deflate the balls via text or email, they would have already seen these messages on J and M's phones.

Did they do a full forensic analysis on J's and M's phones to see if messages were deleted, etc.?
I think so. At least one of the messages in the Wells report was to an unknown recipient because they failed to recover it completely (looks like it was deleted).
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1871 on: July 30, 2015, 10:33:13 PM »

Offline kozlodoev

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If there's no possible punishment for not cooperating with an investigation, why would anyone ever cooperate with one? Why wouldn't Kraft have just told everyone associated with the team to ignore any queries into deflategate if there was no penalty for doing so? Isn't he smart enough to think of things like that?
I don't know, how do we get anyone convicted in a court of law when they're allowed to refuse to give self-incriminating testimony?
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1872 on: July 30, 2015, 10:55:59 PM »

Offline PhoSita

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Except there is. Some Patriots fans like to throw out words like "unprecedented" when it's clearly not.



Name me a single instance of a player being suspended for failure to cooperate with a league investigation, or "general awareness"of misconduct by other people in his organization.

What's more, point to the specific rule that Brady has supposedly violated due to his supposed "failure to cooperate" and his "general awareness" of wrongdoing.

I think you'll find that there is no specific language in the CBA to describe the conduct for which Brady is being punished.  That's a problem for the league, because a disciplinary decision has to be based upon the essence of the CBA, otherwise the players didn't really ever agree to be bound in that way and the league has no power to enforce it.

  If there's no possible punishment for not cooperating with an investigation, why would anyone ever cooperate with one? Why wouldn't Kraft have just told everyone associated with the team to ignore any queries into deflategate if there was no penalty for doing so? Isn't he smart enough to think of things like that?

If the NFL wanted to have a clearly defined punishment for failure to cooperate they should have bargained for one.

Also,  if the punishment were based on lack of cooperation that needed to be stated clearly from the initial issuance of the punishment.   Not going in that direction once it becomes clear that there's little basis for the original accusation.
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1873 on: July 31, 2015, 02:54:32 AM »

Offline rocknrollforyoursoul

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I don't really buy the "failure to cooperate" idea when the thing Brady "failed" to "cooperate" about was something that should never have been an issue in the first place. If one of my supervisors wanted to give me the third degree about taking a couple of company pens home from the office, I might be a little peeved too.
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Re: #DeflateGate
« Reply #1874 on: July 31, 2015, 09:56:36 AM »

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I don't have a twitter, and I know ultimately it wouldn't leave a dent, but part of me wants to create a twitter just to message Chris Mortenson and rail on him for how much of a coward he is.

The fact that he cancelled his radio show appearance is pathetic, and his statement is ridiculous.

“You guys made a mistake by drumming up business for the show and how I would address my reporting for the first time"...first of all, the fact that you're addressing this reporting 'for the first time' is a big problem.  This initial report is what shaped and grew everyone's perception of this whole event and the fact that you HAVEN'T addressed it is just simply bad reporting.

“I will not allow WEEI, Kraft or anybody to make me the centerpiece of a story that has been misreported far beyond anything I did in the first 48 hours. Maybe when the lawsuit is settled, in Brady’s favor, I hope, we can revisit. Don’t call.”...second of all, hate to break it to you Mort but you ARE a centerpiece of this.  And to say the story has been misreported far beyond anything you did in the first 48 hours is just a flat-out wrong statement.  Man up, take your medicine, and admit your sources were wrong.

And I know WEEI is reporting that Mike Kensil was his source, which is incredibly believable and very well may be the case, but I'm not gonna go crazy on it just yet until it gets confirmed by somebody else other than a radio personality.