Deflategate Scandal Analysis

Any issue involving professional sports and athletes is almost guaranteed to be headline news in today’s society. This is particularly true when it comes to the National Football League (NFL), especially when it involves one of the league’s best teams and player. In 2014, during the AFC Championship football game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, there was a significant controversy that possibly had an impact on the outcome of the game; however, the Patriots went on to win the game 45-7. This controversy involved tampering with the game balls, in particular deflating the footballs, which became known as the Deflategate scandal. Since this scandal has to do with the NFL, one of the game’s best quarterbacks (Tom

Tom Brady claimed that he had no knowledge of the game balls being deflated and would give his full cooperation to the investigation; however, this was likely not true. In the NFL, each team provides their own footballs, so the biggest issue other than the simple fact of cheating, was that deflating the balls would have only benefited Tom Brady and the Patriots. Deflating footballs allows the quarterback to grip the ball easier, along with making the football easier to catch. This is especially true in tough whether conditions – like there were during this particular championship game. Even though Brady stated that he was not involved in this scandal, he acted very suspiciously in the days and weeks after. The day that Tom Brady was supposed to meet with investigators he reportedly destroyed his cell phone, which prevented investigators from recovering any messages or emails that may have been incriminating. Every story has two sides to it, and on the other side attempting to reprimand Brady was NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Roger Goodell was very unpleased about this Deflategate scandal to say the least. He was convinced that Brady had cheated and set out to make an example out of Tom Brady and the Patriots organization in hopes that other teams would take notice, and this type of controversy

During this case, Brady attempted to meet with NFL officials to try and reach a settlement outside of court. Goodell named himself to serve as the arbitrator in this case – not allowing Brady to have a say in who arbitrated his case – which infringed on his arbitration rights to have a neutral third party hear the case. Goodell also denied a request by the National Football League Players Association to question Jeffrey Pash who was the co-writer of the Wells Report, which was the report being used against Tom Brady in the Deflategate case. By doing this, Brady and the NFLPA were unable to study the evidence being used to punish him. Since they were unable to view the evidence against Brady there was lack of due process and Goodell was violating Tom Brady’s sixth amendment rights (McCann, 2015). Preventing the NFLPA to question Robert Pash made it so they were not able to effectively prepare and defend Brady correctly since important information was being