#DeflateGate (Court of Appeals Reinstates Suspension)

[Donoghus]

I think the fumbles would be a by-product of using a less inflated ball.

The opposite. Less inflation gives you a better grip.

And less bounce off pads.

Yeah. Outside of kicking & punting, I'm having a tough time thinking where having a more inflated ball would be beneficial outside of a player preference standpoint like how Aaron Rodgers claims to like it.

[colincb]

Brady testimony in NFL 'Deflategate' released

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:19434dc6a57643ccb6a50692fcc74398

Although Wells asked repeatedly for Brady's cellphone, the investigator also testified: "I did not tell Mr. Brady at any time that he would be subject to punishment for not giving -- not turning over the documents. I did not say anything like that."

[BballTim]

I think the fumbles would be a by-product of using a less inflated ball.

The opposite. Less inflation gives you a better grip.

  I think you misunderstood my post.

[knuckleballer]

I think Brady's explanation for why he had the phone destroyed makes perfect sense. 

Of course, if his attorney had fed him that answer beforehand, it would make perfect sense.

Still, it rings of truth to me regardless.

  The timing's a little fishy, as is the (supposed) fact that he never had the phone he used before that one destroyed.

You could also say he waited until his lawyers told him he did not need to hand over his phone before he replaced it.  That would be responsible and rational.

  His lawyer would have told him from day one that he didn't need to hand over his phone. They wouldn't have just decided that the week of his interview.

So then why didn't he just get rid of the phone on day one? 

And when did the NFLPA get involved who was very vocal about not handing over the phone?

  This conversation's starting to take on a "who's on first" quality.

Wells and Goodell could have found Abbott and Costello guilty of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby based on that routine.  And some people here would buy into it.

[D.o.s.]

By the same token Brady could have taped himself burning down a house from start to finish and some posters would still believe it must have been an accident. 

[BballTim]

By the same token Brady could have taped himself burning down a house from start to finish and some posters would still believe it must have been an accident. 

  And defend him for destroying the video, because nobody could definitively prove that he did anything without it.

[D.o.s.]

  Definitely.

Reading through the transcript now. Here's one relevant bit:

Now, did there come a time after February 28th, so now we are well past the Super Bowl, when you learned from your lawyers or your agents that there had been some request made for e-mails and texts that you might have?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Now, we know that those were — nothing was turned over or the request was not responded to. How did you make the decision about that? What were you relying upon? How did you decide that?"

"Well, I was relying on their advice as my lawyers and what they basically said, There’s been a request, but we don’t think it’s proper for you to turn your phone over, so you don’t need to do that."

If anyone wants to take their own crack at it:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/273547523/Tom-Brady-Appeal-Hearing

Also there is a sick burn (relatively speaking) that starts on page 25 . I enjoyed it.

[GratefulCs]

By the same token Brady could have taped himself burning down a house from start to finish and some posters would still believe it must have been an accident. 

  And defend him for destroying the video, because nobody could definitively prove that he did anything without it.

the hate for brady runs strong in this thread

[tarheelsxxiii]

I'm saying that they didn't take enough measurements to measure the effect of it they didn't take all of the measurements they'd want to, and the measuring they did wasn't accurate enough, they didn't even know (apparently) which gauge they used for some of the measurements. On top of that, they don't know how well the balls held their air pressure. Did I miss anything?

I am actually an engineer with a background working with applications of the ideal gas law (and some other gas laws), and there are a couple of things beyond the uncertainties that BballTim has listed.  I am being a total devil's advocate to refute the NFL because I don't believe them anymore.  I don't know what happened but I enjoy trying to shoot down the NFL's case (which isn't hard because it has a lot of holes).

The first has nothing to do with gases but when leather gets wet, it relaxes or stretches a little.  All the balls would have a different level of moisture content at the time of being measured and the leather would be different in every ball.  This doesn't necessarily favor the Pats but their balls would have been a little wetter when tested at halftime than the Colts balls which had a little longer to dry.  This is not a big difference but we are talking about fractions of psi.  We are talking about 0.5 psi out of a total absolute pressure of about 27 psi or 2% so something small can be making the difference in these measurements

The other thing that can make a difference is that as balls are pumped up, the air inside gets hotter.  The pump takes air at 0 psig (14.7 psia or absolute pressure) and compresses it to say 13 psig (27.7 psia) so that it can go through the needle and into the ball.  This small amount of air will be hot per the ideal gas law and will mix with the cooler air already in the ball.  So if the refs added a little air to the Pat's balls, the air in the ball at that moment would be a little hotter than equilibrium (room air) and the cooling effect would reduce the pressure even more.

If the Refs took a little air out of the Colts balls, the air in the balls is expanded a little and cooled a little, reducing its change in temperature and resulting change in pressure.  This type of thing could contribute to the fact that the Pat's balls lost more air pressure than the Colts.  I say "could" because I have never seen a description of what the refs did with the balls before the game.

And my final thought (for now anyway) is if there was a camera on the bathroom to record that McNally went in with the balls for 90 seconds, shouldn't there be film to show any other time he had gone in?  If he had been at work all day and didn't go to the bathroom, wouldn't that make the idea that he just went to the bathroom more plausible?  And if they had film of him taking a leak say 30 minutes earlier, that would destroy his story.  Since the NFL has leaked every other detail true or not, if they had him in the bathroom earlier, I sure we would have heard about that.

It seems reasonable to me that he would take a leak before heading out on the field.  He is probably required to stay on the field and would not have a chance to run back in before halftime.  I know I take a leak before I go to my seat when I go to games.

For anyone still reading this long post I want to explain gage pressure vs. absolute pressure.  When they quote 12.5 or 13.0 psi, they are implying that this is gage pressure or psig.  Gage pressure means the difference between the pressure you are measuring and atmospheric pressure (which varies but averages 14.7 psia at sea level).  Pressure gages can only measure a pressure relative to a reference pressure so gages inherently reference atmospheric pressure (it is right there and easy to reference).  The point is that pressure gages of the type used are not highly accurate and real gases do not behave exactly as ideal gases.  You are comparing a inaccurate measurement of gage pressure to a somewhat simplified calculation of absolute pressure-temperature changes so 0.5 psi of bias (about 2% of the absolute pressure in the ball) is a really small difference.

Why would McNally go to all this trouble to release an almost immeasurable amount of air from the balls?  You could barely get the needle in and out quick enough to limit the release of air to the amount we are talking about.

Late to the party but TP for the post. This is why I love CsBlog.

[D.o.s.]

By the same token Brady could have taped himself burning down a house from start to finish and some posters would still believe it must have been an accident. 

  And defend him for destroying the video, because nobody could definitively prove that he did anything without it.

the hate for brady runs strong in this thread

I would say it is decidedly the opposite. however my point was mostly that the folks who make up the die hards on either side are sort of immune to any evidence one way or another. There's a bit of "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" going on.

[Roy H.]

Here's a snippet from the summary of Brady's testimony:

[Brady] denied discussing air-pressure levels with the ball boys or even thinking about how inflated the footballs were when he selected them. He said he was not aware of the rules that govern the inflation levels of footballs until after an Oct. 16, 2014, game against the New York Jets in which he complained about the size of the footballs.

With the caveat that I haven't read the actually testimony, does that ring true to anybody?  Almost every QB in the media has indicated that he had a preference.  It just defies logic that Tom Brady, a top-10 QB of all-time, would not understand the rules about the football, or would even think about inflation in terms of having a preference.

Wasn't it Brady -- along with Manning -- that lobbied the league to allow QBs to break in footballs?  This is the most important tool in his craft; I just flat out don't believe that he had no idea about ball pressure for the first dozen years of his career.

The NFL appears slimy to me, but so does Brady.

[cometboy]

Here's a snippet from the summary of Brady's testimony:

Wasn't it Brady -- along with Manning -- that lobbied the league to allow QBs to break in footballs?  This is the most important tool in his craft; I just flat out don't believe that he had no idea about ball pressure for the first dozen years of his career.

correct - this is also one of the circumstantial pieces of evidence against him that leads the NFL to believe he is guilty in the absence of any reliable hard evidence - i must admit it's all pretty fishy, but the NFL just does't have a strong enough evidential case to drop the hammer on Brady and the Pats.

CB

[Moranis]

Here's a snippet from the summary of Brady's testimony:

[Brady] denied discussing air-pressure levels with the ball boys or even thinking about how inflated the footballs were when he selected them. He said he was not aware of the rules that govern the inflation levels of footballs until after an Oct. 16, 2014, game against the New York Jets in which he complained about the size of the footballs.

With the caveat that I haven't read the actually testimony, does that ring true to anybody?  Almost every QB in the media has indicated that he had a preference.  It just defies logic that Tom Brady, a top-10 QB of all-time, would not understand the rules about the football, or would even think about inflation in terms of having a preference.

Wasn't it Brady -- along with Manning -- that lobbied the league to allow QBs to break in footballs?  This is the most important tool in his craft; I just flat out don't believe that he had no idea about ball pressure for the first dozen years of his career.

The NFL appears slimy to me, but so does Brady.

Yeah just doesn't make sense.  Cris Carter was on Mike and Mike this morning and basically flat out called Brady a liar.  Said there was no way he didn't know the rules. 

Couple that with him not turning over the cell phone (or even the transcripts) and the few other statements he made that just lack veracity and it isn't hard to see why the NFL ruled the way they did.  I mean you have a guy that is flat out lying to you, withholding evidence, and generally not fully cooperating.  Makes you think he is doing that because there is something to hide.  I just don't see how the court overturns this.  Cover-ups are almost always worse than the actual crime. 

[Moranis]

Here's a snippet from the summary of Brady's testimony:

Wasn't it Brady -- along with Manning -- that lobbied the league to allow QBs to break in footballs?  This is the most important tool in his craft; I just flat out don't believe that he had no idea about ball pressure for the first dozen years of his career.

correct - this is also one of the circumstantial pieces of evidence against him that leads the NFL to believe he is guilty in the absence of any reliable hard evidence - i must admit it's all pretty fishy, but the NFL just does't have a strong enough evidential case to drop the hammer on Brady and the Pats.

CB

Right because Brady wouldn't give it to them.

[cometboy]

Here's a snippet from the summary of Brady's testimony:

Wasn't it Brady -- along with Manning -- that lobbied the league to allow QBs to break in footballs?  This is the most important tool in his craft; I just flat out don't believe that he had no idea about ball pressure for the first dozen years of his career.

correct - this is also one of the circumstantial pieces of evidence against him that leads the NFL to believe he is guilty in the absence of any reliable hard evidence - i must admit it's all pretty fishy, but the NFL just does't have a strong enough evidential case to drop the hammer on Brady and the Pats.

CB

Right because Brady wouldn't give it to them.

he was under no legal or contractual obligation to provide anything else - the league conclusions may be right, but they are over reaching due to the lack of evidence and just plain shoddy/sloppy investigating. Why do you think Goodell didn't appoint a true independent arbitrator?

CB

edit: replace "true independent arbitrator" with "impartial arbitrator"