Drinking the Deflaterade: The Patriots Fan Swallows Again
Special Commentary by PalmerSucks
June 8, 2015
In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s been a big cloud of whine floating up from New England lately. The reason? Poor Tommy Brady has been victimized by the evil Ted Wells and his mustache. Pending appeal, the pretty boy faces a 4-game vacation for his alleged role in yet the latest of Patriots rule-break scandals, Deflategate.
Frankly I couldn’t care less about Tom Brady’s shrunken balls, other than the fact that his situation obviously impacts the Stillers’ opener. If a bunch of drones want to take to parking lots or message boards to cry for poor Tommy, fine. If these geniuses want to take from their minimum-wage paychecks to donate to some billionaire’s penalty fund, hey, go for it.
But when these brickheads start dissing my team in some backhanded effort to drag them down into the same mud -- well, then, that’s a different story altogether.
I’m specifically referring to a website that’s made some waves on the ‘net lately. I’m not going to name it because I don’t want these sneaks to get any more pub than they already have; I’ll only say the name of the site refers to a debatable claim that – in typical “everybody does it so we’re not guilty” Pats fan fashion –your team is a bunch of dirty cheaters, too.
Yes, out of the blue, smack in the middle of Deflategate, sprouts a site detailing the alleged cheating of all NFL teams. Nothing suspicious about that, right?
The site’s a hoot from the get-go, an obvious creation of desperate Patriots fans trying to pretend it’s not the creation of desperate Patriots fans (I’ve heard they’ve even gone so far as to spoof their server’s point of origin). Another giveaway: the cutesy use of the term “more probable than not” to mock the language used in the Wells Report. The home page displays a grid featuring all 32 NFL teams, which you can click on individually to receive a list describing that team’s alleged cheating incidents along with a cheating-index score.
You’ll be proud to know your Stillers rank as the second-biggest cheats of all time, scoring a whopping 40 (second only to Denver’s 44). The “Biggest Cheaters” list, interestingly enough, begins with Denver (a team noted for beating New England in the playoffs – the site’s “Commish” and his obvious beef with Sharpe shows the level of butthurtness Pats fans still have over his famed “National Guard” routine); the Stillers (who, to the chagrin of Pats fans, own more Lombardis than their team does); the Jets (ratter-outers of Spygate); and the Giants (destroyers of would-be perfect seasons). Gee, think there are any axes to grind there?
Speaking of sharp-edged cutting tools, the Stillers “cheat” page begins with a subtle dig at the city itself, with a not-quite-necessary link to a book about Pittsburgh titled “The Paris of Appalachia” (more on this baked-bean brand of smugness later). But let’s return to matters at hand and the home page, where it is claimed by the creators: “You can challenge the rating and commentary, but you can't challenge the cheat.”
I beg to differ.
One of the Stillers alleged offenses is what they term “Tarpgate” – a reference to the 1976 AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh which featured a frozen artificial tundra, something the visitors claimed was the result of deliberate groundskeeping neglect. (It earns “4 ½ cameras,” another little tip-off as to who is behind the site.) Here’s the thing though: unlike “Spygate,” there never WAS any such thing as “Tarpgate.”
Guess who the only people bitching about this one were? Yes, the losing-team Oakland Raiders. “There was a suggestion the Steelers had iced the field,” the site quotes an alleged “football historian” as saying. Of course this “suggestion” was made by Al Davis. Otherwise, nobody cared, and there was never anything even close to discipline handed out by the league. Quite the opposite, because none other than NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was in attendance that day and commented thusly: “It’s the same for both teams.”
There was not a single shred of evidence the Three Rivers ground crew did anything unseemly; but you know which team HAS been caught on camera playing games with the field? Why none other than the New England Patriots.
December 12, 1982: the Patriots line up for what would be the winning field goal in Foxborough against Miami. During the break, out steams a little tractor (driven by a convicted burglar, no less) to clear a little patch of the snow-blanketed field to help the kicker. This results in an easier boot, a Pats win and what Don Shula calls the “most unfair act” in NFL history.
The Steelers receive a full cheat point for this -gate that never was a -gate, while the Patriots don’t get penalized anything for their outrageous take on home field advantage. The reason they get off? The site claims that the Dolphins had been offered the same snow-clearing courtesy (sounds a wee bit like “it’s the same for both teams” huh?). Their source for the claim? None other than then-Patriots player John Hannah. Nice job of objectivity there, boys.
The Stillers, predictably, get docked a big, fat 8 points for alleged steroids usage. They cite the “Dr. Rydze” saga as a “proof.” Rydze, a former Stillers staff physician, got into some hot water several years over alleged illegal distribution of steroids, HGH and painkillers. Never mind that the good doctor’s alleged activity was never linked to the Stillers, the site plows (oops, did I say “plows”?) ahead anyway, filling in the blank by skipping back 30 years to dredge up an old Bradshaw quote: “we did steroids to get away the aches and speed healing.” Well there you have, the smoking hypo needle, the big damning admission, right?
Uh, not quite. Obviously Bradshaw is talking here about corticosteroids, not your typical musclehead anabolic brand of ‘roid. How do we know? Bradshaw states: “my use of steroids from a doctor was to speed up healing. It wasn’t to get bigger or stronger or faster.” Everybody gets prescribed this garden-variety steroid at one time or another. I have an elderly aunt who just got issued cortisone for a swollen knee -- I guess that makes her a ‘roid ranger too?
But let’s step back and follow the er-- “logic” here. 1) The Stillers employed a doctor in the 2000s who got indicted for steroid-related misdeeds in his private (non-team) practice. 2) Some of the Stillers of the 1970s did steroids which sets precedent. 3) Therefore the Stillers of the 2000s were guilty of doing steroids too!
Conveniently, the slicksters who run the site sidestep an inconvenient little fact: the Stillers went on to win the Super Bowl the year AFTER they cut Rydze loose (in 2007). They also went on to win the AFC Championship a couple years later. So if the Stillers were so success-dependent on the good doc as claimed, how do you account for their continued success in his absence? If you’re the site’s content creator, you just don’t.
Then we get the ultimate cheat: pretending only the Stillers did steroids back in the 1970s – or worse, suggesting that they began the whole practice. After quoting bitter loser and Super Bowl IX punching bag, Fran Tarkenton, then making a left-field Bonds-and-Clemens comparison, the site claims the “entire league” was victimized by what Pittsburgh did. (You mean the Dallas Cowboys, Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Rams and yes, New England Patriots, all of whom no doubt had players using steroids because they weren’t illegal back then?)
The site predictably quotes Jim Haslett’s wrong-headed claim that the Stillers originated pro-football steroid use (for which he apologized later). But a quick ‘net search of “San Diego Chargers steroids” will bring you to a slightly different conclusion: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=3866837
Like Pats fans are so busy crying these days: do a little looking-into of the facts before you go slinging it, OK? Yes, as Steve Courson says in that book so many haters love to quote, a few Stillers back in the ‘70s did steroids. But, as a lawsuit against the league by ex-Baltimore Colt Nelson Munsey states, steroid use was simply “consistent with the common usage of such drugs in professional football at that time.” In fact, even Courson says that steroid use was all the uh, rage, in the NFL by the time he got to the Stillers (for Cripes sake he’d been doing them in college) – a quote always ignored by the haters.
Here’s a little tale for all you steroid scholars out there: the leader of San Diego’s ‘60s anabolics program was strength coach Alvin Roy, responsible for making the Chargers the first pro football team to distribute Dianabol team-wide. Roy would go on to employment at several NFL teams (none of which included the Stillers) and spent the first half of the ‘70s in Dallas. So while the Stillers may have had some players juicing back then, if anything they had to FACE the team who employed the father of modern PED use – not once, but twice in the Super Bowl. Remember that the next time some jagoff starts quoting you from “False Glory.”
The whole site philosophy is that everybody cheats, so let’s all chill, mmkay? Yet here we have the ultimate example of something “everybody did” – but since it’s not the Patriots in question, it’s all bad and stuff. Which of course misses a key point.
“Cheating” is employing an unfair advantage that the other team can’t enjoy. That’s the difference between “Tarpgate” and what happened in Foxborough in 1982. Both the Stillers and Raiders shared the same field, as the commissioner observed. But only New England got to kick the winning field goal in a specially-cleared area of the field. (Likewise, steroid usage in the days before they were banned can’t be considered in the same cheating category, since everybody had the same chance to use them. Here’s a quote from a letter to Congress called “Performance-Enhancement and the Future” written by an ex-NFL player: “Steroid use officially became cheating in the NFL in 1989 when punitive testing began with fines and suspensions imposed.” That player’s name? Why, Steve Courson.)
Furthermore, what motivation would the Stillers have to ice the field? Davis complained that the Stillers did it to neutralize the Raiders downfield passing game – which makes little sense considering the Stillers only possessed the greatest receiving duo of all time. What’s more, John Stallworth had no problem performing that day, hauling in the game’s big score. (Proving that, if anything, the slippery conditions would hamstring the defensive backs in coverage and aid the downfield game, but why use logic when bullshit is so much cheaper?)
But here’s where the site – if it ever had any to begin with – really loses all credibility. Because offense number one, even worse than steroid use, is Mike Tomlin’s clumsy Thanksgiving-day sideline gaffe in Baltimore, referred to as “Impedegate.” That’s right – a dumb misstep, wrong as it was, is actually ranked a worse crime than years of alleged steroid abuse. Uh huh.
To make things more Patriots-friendly, the site quotes some random Twitter poster: “can you imagine if Belichick tripped a player running to the end zone? Seal Team 6 would be on its way to Foxborough.”
Funny, not only can I “imagine” a similar thing – I’ve seen it actually happen. You can too, just by clicking here:
I love the look Harrison shoots Belichick after their little sideline dance. Know what’s even more hilarious? Not only does the site not dock the Pats for their own “Impedegate,” it doesn’t seem to mention it at all! Despite the best efforts of the site to ignore it, though, it did happen – and funny, I don’t recall any commando units storming Boston afterwards.
As for the Patriots, the only team in league history to be called out twice in public for rules violations by the NFL – these little angels rank a mere #18 on the cheat scale at a mere 21 points (hey don’t want to put them last and tip everybody off, right?) That’s right, according to the site’s scoring system, your Pittsburgh Stillers are about DOUBLE the cheats the New England Patriots are. Amazingly, the Stillers score as bigger cons than even the stickum-covered Oakland Raiders, a team who once displayed a locker-room sign reading “if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.”
But what the site ultimately boils down to is this: an advertisement to declare Pats innocence in Deflategate. In fact they actually have the seeds to call the team the “victim” here, referring to the whole matter as a “witch hunt.” More probably than not.
Shill websites aside, this brings me to my last point. Because as much as I can’t stand the Patriots, it’s their fan base I find even more irritating. There seems to be this “smarter than thou” attitude that permeates Pats Nation, believing as they do they’re better than your average goon rooting for any other team. That’s not surprising, considering that the Patriots fan has taken up the mantle from the 49ers fan of yore.
Back in the ‘80s, mimicking the smug quasi-intellectualism of their coach Bill Walsh, 49er fans had this same “our IQs are higher than yours” thing going. This was back when their fan base was comprised of suburbanites from San Jose, sipping their Chardonnay and nibbling their Camembert out in the tailgate lots. Eventually the 49ers dynasty moved on, as did the team to a new stadium – and a new more gangsta kind of East Bay fan.
By the 2000s, the league’s next “genius” coach, Belichick, arrived in New England. Once the Patriots began winning, the smugness factor increased by a factor of 10. Now everyone who cheered for the Pats believed he was smarter than the rest of us. The Patriots fan base picked up where the old ‘niners fans left off, all smart and self-satisfied.
I’m fairly familiar with New England, and believe me, there are just as many morons residing there as any other part of the country. (Jimmy Fallon did a good job portraying the average chowd’head years ago.) Yet Pats fans don’t just whip out passing stats – they love to quote the number of Ph. D’s residing in the area, as if your average Gillette Stadium yahoo is some Rhodes Scholar.
And how do these mental giants display their smarts? By donating to billionaires, and expecting the rest of us to believe that those ball boys texting about “deflating” really are talking about their Weight Watchers plans. (As for Pats fans, they were some of the biggest offenders when it came to piling on Roethlisberger without looking into the facts. The fact that they’re all now crying because other people are jumping to conclusions about their guy is just an enjoyable benefit of this whole Deflategate drama. So get ready for all the cute nicknames, chowds, that go along with being convicted in the Court of the Internet: Tom Shady, Tom Cheaty and my personal favorite, Tom Deflatey.)
Yes, the Pats fan is at it again, just like with Spygate when they claimed the team was innocent because, after all, nobody really understood what they were actually being busted for. This time it’s the complete innocence of their quarterback, because, after all, YOU haven’t read the Wells Report.
You want to live in your bubble world, New England? Fine. You want to believe there’s nothing to see here folks, with a ball boy claiming to have used the urinal in a bathroom that doesn’t even have one? Fine. You want to believe that this sudden flurry of contact Brady had with some slobs he normally wouldn’t give the time of day to means nothing? Fine. Once again, Pats fans want us to buy into the idea that the same mastermind coach they brag about suddenly has no idea what’s going on with the underlings (as with Spygate). The same goes for their superstar, every-detail-covered quarterback.
At this point the Kool-Aid crowd isn’t going to change. They could dig up a text from Brady reading “hey dude get it deflated down to an 8” and the Pats fan will tell you he’s encouraging the guy to diet down to fit into his new bikini.
In my objective opinion, from the information that’s been made public from the report – I don’t think there’s a smoking gun to bust Brady. There’s plenty of text talk about changing the inflation levels of footballs, but so what? That’s the ball staff’s job. I’m sure Roethlisberger and all the other top QBs talk to their guys about how they like their footballs prepared. Unless you can find evidence that there were orders to take the inflation under the minimum psi level, there’s no real proof of anything.
Still, that doesn’t mean there’s not some pretty funny stuff that’s been going on with the Patriots’ pigskin squad, such as: a) the aforementioned ball boy who walked into a bathroom with a sack full o’ balls supposedly to use a urinal – that didn’t exist b) the description of the refs freaking out before the AFC Championship because they couldn’t find New England’s balls – because the ball boy had decided to casually walk off with them c) the fact that ball boy McNally had already been under suspicion by the NFL stemming from a 2004 incident involving the strange insertion of “non-approved” practice balls into a game. Likely that’s where the whole “more probably than not” thing started.
Anyway, Pats fans, believe what you want, do what you want. Just don’t try dragging the rest of us down into the muck with you. My team cheats? That – despite your best efforts to show otherwise – is still a matter of opinion.
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