|
The Road to Glendale: NFL Playoffs discussion
|
Let's say the Patriots were totally aware and intented to under-inflate the balls. What happens then? Is the win vacated and the Colts go? Do the Pats still get to play in the SB after cheating in a game?
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson 
The Patriots would likely be fined, with the possibility of losing a draft pick or two if the league decides that it was a particularly egregious offense (which seems unlikely to me). They would not vacate the win and would still play in the Super Bowl.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould 
No one is taking their AFC Championship away. I don't think the under-inflated balls had that much to do with a 45-7 schlubbing.
The problem for the Pats is that they have gotten caught cheating so many times, oftentimes right before a Super Bowl. (Spygate) If they win, it's just another asterisk. The issue is, how does the league handle it?
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<--- 
I'm shocked. Shocked.
 RE: The Road to Glendale: NFL Playoffs discussion
January 21, 2015 at 1:59 pm
(This post was last modified: January 21, 2015 at 2:02 pm by Jackalope.)
(January 21, 2015 at 12:22 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: No one is taking their AFC Championship away. I don't think the under-inflated balls had that much to do with a 45-7 schlubbing. I doubt it would have altered the outcome of that game. It was a thorough ass kicking, more so than is explained by one team using out of spec footballs - but that's largely beside the point, and it's insufficient to examine cheating based on the outcome, it's more appropriate to do so in the light of intent and integrit of the game. The Pats have been caught cheating before, and allegations have surfaced many times. Belickick's Pats are a team who have demonstrated they're willing to do anything to win, including violating the integrity of the game. Of course I can't know, but I would be surprised if there weren't more instances of cheating. Last time, Belichick was find $500K. It appears that hasn't deterred him. This may sound harsh, but I'm leaning towards wanting to see him suspended or banned, for at least a year. Pete Rose was banned from baseball for what? Gambling on baseball, including betting on his own team. (It would be far more damning to bet against one's own team, in my mind.) No allegations of in-game impropriety whatsoever, as far as I can recall. The man liked to gamble (which is not uncommon in professional sports), and he made the career-ending decision to bet on the outcome of baseball games he had a stake in. For that, he was banned from the game of professional baseball for life, which made him ineligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame, to which he would have certainly been otherwise inducted. Fining Belichick again is insufficient. Players are suspended for less. I have no illusions as to whether the league will do so or not. They won't, but they should. 
They should be disqualified. I'm not sure what should happen after that, and I won't comment on that part, being that I'm a Colts fan, but disqualification is the only appropriate thing to do, IMO.
(January 21, 2015 at 2:52 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: They should be disqualified. I'm not sure what should happen after that, and I won't comment on that part, being that I'm a Colts fan, but disqualification is the only appropriate thing to do, IMO. I *wouldn't* want to see that, because my team has a stake in the Super Bowl, and I'd sure as fuck not want to see an (*) next to the "results" if one team is DQ'ed. (January 21, 2015 at 2:56 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(January 21, 2015 at 2:52 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote: They should be disqualified. I'm not sure what should happen after that, and I won't comment on that part, being that I'm a Colts fan, but disqualification is the only appropriate thing to do, IMO. Oh, I get it; I'm a Colts fan, and I'd hate to see them go to the SB by default, which would be a lot like an asterisk. The Pats don't deserve to go, though, and should be DQ'd, whatever the following outcome is. The really screwed up part about this is that they've affected every single other team on the league with it. Reading comments on ESPN, even Pats fans are horrified, as they should be. They've been lied to and cheated, maybe even worse than rival teams. (January 21, 2015 at 3:03 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote:(January 21, 2015 at 2:56 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I *wouldn't* want to see that, because my team has a stake in the Super Bowl, and I'd sure as fuck not want to see an (*) next to the "results" if one team is DQ'ed. I get that. Cheaters don't deserve to be rewarded, even if the cheating didn't alter the win-loss outcome of the game. It's hard to imagine that it would account for a 38-point differential in score. Pats fans *should* be horrified. This isn't a case of "everyone else does it" like violating the league's substance policy - I can't recall any other allegations like this against a team that wasn't New England. I want Belichick out of the league. I respect his record as a coach, no doubt about that, but cheating is a cancer, and it needs to be excised.
I totally agree with everything you just said.
|
|
« Next Oldest | Next Newest »
|
