I dunno. I don’t totally disagree with you, especially when you think about hockey fights vs basketball fights and how they are viewed, reported, etc. But, on the other hand, people were just as pissed at Mark McGuire and Roger Clemens as Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds (and I think this stupid story is more like those…

The Regressing sub-blog is about statistics. They are examining some statistics that were passed around. That’s all.

They aren’t mutually exclusive. If you help your team you naturally also cheat the team you’re playing against.

Awww, grasping at irrelevant facts. This stage is called denial. Don’t worry, you’ll move past it.

Did Dr. Sutton take care of you already too?

Is it so hard to believe that they didn’t have a protocol for the Patriots’ newest type of cheating yet? Is it also the league’s fault for not stopping them from shooting illegal video? How, pray tell, could the league have prevented Aaron Hernandez from the murdering? I’m sure that’s not his fault either, right? It’s…

Because of TV contracts they also have to keep to some pretty tight timing. It seems the point was to prevent it from happening, then they fucked up and did the best they could to figure out if it happened. I’m not saying they handled it well, but you’re just making up motivations and ascribing them to actions that…

The legal concepts you want to look into are proximate cause and contributory negligence (or contributory fault). The league could make these arguments to mitigate what it owes. Jurisdictions handle contributory fault differently, in some places if you’re less than 50% at fault you can sue and collect damages in full,…

They did check. And they put observers in the locker room. And the Partriots found a way around that. That’s a commitment to cheating, and it’s way more about NE than it is about the NFL’s inability to prevent the cheating.

They put extra officials in the Patriot locker room, that’s why McNally had to take the balls to the bathroom. The league tried to prevent it but underestimated the Patriot Way (which is cheating at any cost, apparently). You can criticize the quality of the attempt to stop them, but one was made, so you cannot say…

It implies a setup, rather than just catching someone doing something you knew they would do. In this case, the league sent additional observers to the Patriot locker room to try to monitor and they were hoodwinked by McNally running off (which is comically inept on the league’s part, but also entirely inconsistent…

The report says there were many more officials than normal around the Patriot locker game pregame and that McNally made off with the balls to take them to the bathroom. It sounded more like the league tried to prevent it and then McNally ran off anyway, so they measured the balls again later and caught them doing what…

and per-where did you see him say you should trust Goodell? He’s just pointing out that the agent is either the pot or the kettle here, nothing further than that.

You’re arguing against something no one said. Mr. Maddened (or is it Mr. John? The comma confuses me) up above is just saying to call out the other sides credibility based on it having a stake in the outcome is silly when you yourself also have an obvious stake in the outcome. That doesn’t mean you don’t listen to…

Facebones? Facebones? I guess you can’t hear me down there.

And Barry Bonds was already good when he cheated. Doesn’t make it any less against the rules. Does it? Next time you get pulled over for speeding, tell the cop you didn’t hit anyone so it’s okay. See how that goes.

They may have qualified for SBXX, but I’m pretty sure the team never actually made it to that game.

And Barry Bonds is the best hitter ever. And they both cheated, and, actually, I don’t really give a shit that they did at all. But pretending this isn’t cheating and that Brady didn’t know about it is silly. What I can’t grasp is why cheating is death in baseball and meh in football.

I’d be okay with a water scandal being called watergate too. Just to really fuck with everyone.

I’m a Yankee fan, and I even liked that team.