The Deflategate penalty upholds the NFL's non-existent integrity
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Version 0 of 1. Those circumstantially involved with deflating a bladder below NFL regulations have been duly punished: New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will be suspended for four games next season, the team will be fined $1m and have their 2016 No1 draft pick voided. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a man who looks like he drops a hot toaster oven into the bathwater when it gets tepid, has spoken. The NFL deserves to be called out on one particularly ridiculous and disingenuous reason they cite for the penalty: protecting the league’s “integrity.” In NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent’s letter to Tom Brady explaining his penalty he wrote: “Your actions as set forth in the report clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football. The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league...” That’s a hell of a phrase. Let’s look at the integrity of the game. The term’s usage here bears no relation to principle but rather to maintenance of the barrier between real life and the league’s hermetically sealed brand asylum. Vincent states another reason for Brady’s punishment: “[his] failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation.” Goodell must be able to command compliance at all times — even if it means punishing Brady for failing to volunteer personal information he had no obligation to disclose in order to aid a circumstantial case against him — otherwise the bubble could burst, and law, context and perspective might come rushing in. No other usage of integrity here applies. Consider: Brady’s punishment will be appealed and revised downward, but for now his suspension stands at four games. That’s the same number that Ben Roethlisberger received, post appeal, after being accused of sexual assault for the second time in nine months. That’s double the number of games that Ray Rice was initially suspended for knocking out his fiancée Janay in an elevator. Speaking of that, the Mueller Report on that incident was only one-third the length of the absurd 243-page Wells Report on deflated footballs. Integrity might be undermined more by a record of the NFL trying to suppress evidence that everyday conditions of playing football destroy people’s brains. Or that the Colts owner was pulled over for a DUI while having Dr Hunter S. Thompson’s Vicodin and Percocet medley in his system and was suspended six games ... from Twitter, basically. Or an owner who paid $92m in penalties for defrauding customers. Or a team owner who keeps hiring fake Native Americans to defend his team’s racist name while screwing fans at every opportunity. Or that the NFL – a league that loves to swaddle itself in the flag – allowed 14 NFL teams to charge the Pentagon $5.4m to honor service members. Or that the NFL’s domestic violence partnership organization is a phantom. Or that the pink-washing of the NFL’s breast-cancer awareness is yet another scam. Or that the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers both had arrangements with law enforcement “fixers.” But those are all questions for the real world, and we’re talking about the sealed fantasia of Goodell World. And, within it, those things don’t really matter. They speak to the integrity of an organization in a world with morals and accountability. They don’t speak to the integrity of a game. The most destructive of the above conditions is the systemic brain damage wrought by playing a game, but fans will rationalize that. The effects are mostly felt years later, after the highlights. The games themselves are unaffected. (Patriot Julian Edelman, who went on to score the Super Bowl’s winning touchdown, was concussed by a hit on the final drive. Oh well.) Drunk, defrauding and delusional owners are bad only insofar as they field bad teams. Jets and veterans are neat, but they just delay kickoff. Nobody cares about breast cancer, since the players won’t get it. As for domestic violence, well, that’s what team fixers are for. What Brady and the Patriots did, however, is immediately understandable within the context of the integrity of the game, because they might have done something to help your team lose a game. (The fact that they went on to win the Super Bowl only makes them seem more perfidious, because it makes every other team a loser by default.) It is the perfect crime for Roger Goodell, because it takes place entirely within the dimensions of his power and can be addressed wholly by it. It doesn’t require the law enforcement, judicial systems or morality of the surrounding society. It is an event that allows him to preserve the illusion of supreme control and perfect justice, knowing that his judgeship will be legitimized by a kangaroo courtroom filled with everyone who is not a Patriots fan. Even his boobery serves a purpose. As SB Nation’s Spencer Hall pointed out, every public relations disaster committed by Roger Goodell focuses fan ire on an optimal target. Like WWE’s Vince McMahon, he represents the ultimate theatrical heel that everyone can root against while ignoring systemic labor issues, broken bodies and dumbfounding mismanagement. Every moment spent castigating him is a moment you’re not paying attention to another billionaire sitting on his cottage-cheesed ass, collecting millions in profits, threatening labor lockouts while feasting on the athlete carcasses that generate their revenue. As absurd as it sounds, Goodell’s hysterically draconian response to the Patriots really did serve the integrity of the game, because it’s the only offense on the horizon that involves the actual game while diverting attention from all the consequences of the game after the whistle blows. And it will keep working, for a while. Some fans are starting to have longer memories. Eventually, even Goodell’s idiot antics will redound on the ownership class he’s meant to protect. One day, Chuckles the Suicide Mannequin will drag a space heater into the bathtub and start a fire that burns down the mansion and takes everyone else with him. Good. |