For the past week you’ve most likely heard about the newest NFL scandal, Deflate-Gate, and you’ll definitely be hearing about it throughout the Super Bowl and well after that. If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s a quick rundown: the Patriots have been accused of deflating their footballs during their matchup against the Colts last week. As a Pats fan, I have my own personal bias in this matter, but I’m more upset about what the handling of this incident has shown about the NFL. While Deflate-Gate has undoubtedly been played up to give people something to talk about between the playoffs and the Super Bowl, it reinforces a disturbing truth about the NFL – they only care about the message their players are sending while on the field, not off of it.
Obviously the NFL can’t control their players’ personal life; their business is football, not babysitting the men who play it. However, they have a bad history of ignoring or even condoning some questionable (to say the least) actions of the men in the league. They’ve played a big part in putting sports players above the law, making it okay to break society’s rules if you can throw a 100 yard touchdown or are the best tackler on your college team. But where do we draw the line? Maybe with running an illegal dog fighting ring and subjecting dozens of animals to abuse and death, or maybe not, since Michael Vick is currently playing for the Jets. How about being accused of beating your four-year old son – will that get you kicked out of the NFL? I guess not, since The Vikings’ Adrian Peterson was only suspended and is eligible for reinstatement in April. What if you repeatedly beat your wife to the point of unconsciousness in a elevator? Well, that’ll put you on indefinite suspension for a while, but that decision for Ray Rice’s career just got turned over, and now he’s seeking 3.5 million in backpay, because wife beaters are entitled to their million dollar salaries. Even NFL prospect Jameis Winston, in the wake of rape allegations made by his classmate, is still entering the draft for next year and is considered a great pick. While the NFL is branding the Patriots as criminals, they ignore the actual criminal acts of many players in the NFL, or allow them to sweep their troubles under the rug with their million-dollar salaries.
For the past week every sports and social media outlet is condemning Tom Brady for his supposed involvement in Deflate-Gate. Brady is not only one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, he’s also one of the nicest. One of the bus drivers in my hometown used to drive the Patriots to their games at Gillette, and he said out of all the players, coaches, reporters, and everyone on that bus, Tom Brady was the only one to always ask how he was doing and have an actual conversation with him. He is a stand-up family man who has stayed out of the scandals many other players have fallen victim to, yet somehow the suspicion that he deflated footballs for a game has made him a disgrace to the NFL.
Cheating in any capacity is not okay; it ruins the integrity of the game. If it is true that the Patriots did cheat in last Sunday’s game, then I agree that a form of punishment or retribution is due. We don’t want young kids who dream of playing professional sports to think cheating is okay and an easy way to win, but do we want to them think having amazing athletic abilities excuses them from the law and allows them to act however they want? That’s a very dangerous message to be sending to kids who look up to these players. We should be showing them that the integrity of the players is equally if not more important than the integrity of the game they’re playing.