NFL Is Responsible For Unapproved Ball Put Into AFC Championship Game
By Cyrus Geller
The official nickname of this story should be changed from “deflate-gate”, to “the NFL has lost all credibility and doesn’t know anything about investigations-gate”.
Seriously.
This story has gone from weird, to dumb, to stupid, to insane, to hang Roger Goodell out of a helicopter by a rope until he apologizes to Robert Kraft and the Patriots. There have been countless leaks of pointless information, and there is absolutely no evidence of New England doing any wrongdoing whatsoever.
The latest? An NFL ref (eh-“employee”) essentially sold one of the game balls that was intended for charity, and was later fired by the league. One of the other refs noticed a ball was missing, introduced a new unapproved ball into play, which is what the Patriots’ locker room attendant eventually tried to put in the game.
"The unapproved kicking ball that sources told “Outside the Lines” that a Gillette Stadium officials’ locker room attendant tried to introduce into the AFC Championship Game was handed to the man by an NFL employee, a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Wednesday.The source said one of the “K balls,” which are used only for special-teams play, went missing, and an NFL employee in charge of collecting balls for charity gave another ball to Jim McNally, who works the officials’ locker room at Patriots games.McNally then gave it to Greg Yette, an alternate official who was in charge of putting the K balls into play. When Yette saw that ball did not have the pregame marking that referee Walt Anderson had put on the ball, he became suspicious and alerted NFL officials in the press box, a source told “Outside The Lines.”A source told Schefter that the man in charge of collecting balls for charity in previous games has been fired by the league for selling the footballs meant for charity for a profit over a period of time."
Got it? Great.
What this latest report did was just confirm what all intelligent people already knew: this investigation was bogus, and if anything, the NFL would be called into question at the end of it. And oh boy have they ever, as refs selling balls intended for charity is about as bizarre as it gets. The Patriots didn’t do anything wrong, and the NFL continues to lose credibility (not to mention respect) with each passing day.
Roger Goodell: give this team the apology they deserve.