Deflategate

Also funny that the guy who probably did the deflating just happened to go into the only place you're not allowed to have a security camera -- the bathroom.

 

Rhody wants to know who the fuck Neil deGrasse Tyson is to be commenting on science matters, and what the source of his anti-Patriots fervor is.

 

The other Patriots conspiracy theory: LeGarrette Blount's scheme to reunite with Bill Belichick? - Yahoo Sports

Is LeGarrette Blount just messing with the media? If I'm Belichick, I'm telling Blount to stop playing games no matter what the truth is. The Patriots are going out of their way to take on the NFL, now with Kraft calling for an apology if the league can't prove any wrongdoing. Why give the league another reason to look into something the Patriots did this season?

I never put much stock in this at the time, or cared. The Steelers wanted him gone pretty much from the moment he and Bell were arrested, but they were going to wait out the season. Then he continued to be a problem in the locker room and walked out on his team in Tennessee.

This is just one more bit of ammunition to throw at the Patriots. If by some chance the worst of the conspiracy theories are true, it would be a clear case of tampering.

 

Who cares about video, or knowing exactly who or how they deflated the balls? The balls were weighed and passed. At halftime, they were weighed again and 11 of the 12 Patriots balls did not meet the standard. All of the Colts' footballs did. The Patriots are in violation of the rule. The league should have simply assessed them the penalty that is appropriate for the violation. Then this would have all blown over by the weekend and the teams could have spent this week preparing for and talking about the Super Bowl.

Oh wait, Goodell doesn't yet know what punishment is appropriate because he makes it up as he goes along? Now, a week and a half later, people are still talking about how Tom Brady rubs up his balls.

 

The league definitely botched this one by allowing it to drag out so long. It sure seems like they wanted to hand down a punishment during the offseason rather than during the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl and I can understand the reasoning behind that decision, but it has clearly backfired.

 

Right. Clearly, the NFL should stick to things it knows how to handle: concussions and domestic violence.

 

So, he's amended his statement:

On Monday, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History took to Twitter in an attempt to deflate the New England Patriots' Deflategate excuse.

Coach Bill Belichick had said atmospheric pressures and balls being transported from the warm indoors out onto a cold field could have caused them to lose enough pressure to fall below league standards. But Tyson tweeted that to lose as much pressure as the balls did, they would need to be inflated with 125-degree air.

"My calculation used the well-known gas formula that relates pressure to temperature within a fixed volume," Tyson explained on Facebook on Tuesday. "Quite simply, the two quantities are directly and linearly related. e.g. Halve the temperature, you've halved the pressure. Triple the temperature, you've tripled the pressure."

He wrote that his mistake was using absolute pressures instead of gauge pressures. Going by gauge pressures, the balls would need to be inflated with 90-degree air.

But, if you did want a somewhat deflated ball, and you were playing a cold weather game, why not do the math, and inflate the balls with air heated to the perfect temperature?

I'm not saying that's what the Patriots did here, but it sounds like an easy enough thing to pull off if you really wanted to. Though, I suppose it would be nearly impossible to do when it wasn't cold out, so if you want the balls to be the same for every game, you're probably going to have to do it manually.

 

So what did that attendant do in the mysterious room that turned out to be a bathroom?
I still say 90 seconds is about how long it takes to piss and wash your hands and makes sense, but hats off to the NY Daily News - a reporter put 12 balls in an Ikea bag to see how long it would take him to deflate 12 balls. Deflated them in 40 seconds.
DeflateGate update: How to soften 12 balls in 40 seconds! - NY Daily News

Toucher and Rich in Boston were reporting a source said the Patriots handed in underinflated balls to the officials and they were approved by officials, who didn't check them with a gauge. I don't know how much I believe this report seeing how Toucher and Rich aren't exactly known for breaking news, but it's out there.

At this point I just want to know. Sunday can't get here quick enough.

 

If you do it every week, you would know exactly how many seconds you need to stick a pin in each ball to bring the pressure down to the desired level of firmness. Would not be hard to do quickly.

 

I didn't think it was possible and watching the video - and I'm assuming the reporter isn't a pro ball boy on the side - I was surprised at how fast he managed to do it. A ball boy who's done it before can probably do it faster and more precise. I could definitely see this type of stuff going on on the sideline.
That said, I still think he's going in there to take a piss because that's the most logical explanation. Somebody on the radio here asked "Why would you bring the balls in?" The simple answer is he knows he's not supposed to have the balls out of his sight.
However, I think I'm rooting for the balls to have been deflated in the bathroom, just for the next-level planning involved in it. If the Patriots did this, I hope it was done as complex as possible.

 

The fact that you know there are no cameras in the bathroom makes it the logical place to do it.