Friday, May 8, 2015

Tom Brady, the new Richard Nixon: Why I don't believe the Uggs-wearing football player's lies

Longtime Squawkers readers know that I have never been able to stand the smug Tom Brady, the smarmy, Uggs-wearing, pregnant-girlfriend-dumping, dopey-hairstyled phony who got outplayed by Eli Manning -- twice! Not to mention Gisele Bundchen, his smug supermodel wife, who cluelessly shamed moms for not breastfeeding their children and threw a hissy fit after Manning's Giants kicked her husband's tuchis in the Super Bowl for the second time.

But because some people are so shallow, Brady has
gotten away with murder, in no small part because he looks like the fair-haired golden boy. (Meanwhile, some people call Stanford graduate Richard Sherman a thug. Good grief.)

If it weren't for Pete Carroll's brain cramp at the end of this year's Super Bowl, we could be talking about how Brady hasn't won a Super Bowl since George W. Bush's second inauguration, and since Spygate was exposed. But instead, Brady is now a four-time Super Bowl champion. He is also a serial degenerate cheater.

It doesn't say much for Tom Brady's innocence in Deflategate that the biggest voice (no pun intended) coming to his defense is New Jersey Governor Chris (Bridgegate) Christie. It figures. They do have a lot in common. Both do ridiculous, unethical things, and hang their minions out to dry for them. Brady is also like Richard Nixon. He shouldn't have needed to do these things in order to win, but he did them anyway.

Now that the Wells Report has exposed some of the real Tom Brady that too many people haven't wanted to see, I want to point out a few things:

  • If deflating the balls was no big deal, as the Brady sycophants like to say, then why did he need to have it done so many times?
  • Anybody who thinks that John Jastremski and Jim McNally, the Patriots' equipment personnel involved, deflated the balls on their own, without Brady insisting they do it, has no idea how the world works (not to mention all of the text messages showing that Brady wanted the balls deflated.) Tom Brady is the biggest name in the history of the franchise. Anybody who thinks that this was not directed by him must have just fallen off the proverbial turnip truck.
  • According to a Boston Globe story about the Wells Report, Brady also lied about not knowing "McNally's name, his job title, or his pregame responsibilities," but "Jastremski disputed that, saying Brady in fact knew McNally and his role."
  • The fact that Brady lobbied for a rule change in 2006 to try to ensure that he could keep his cheating undetected makes this even worse.
  • Too many people are hung up on the idea that circumstantial evidence isn't real evidence. Ask Brady's old teammate Aaron Hernandez about that. Circumstantial evidence counts, too.
  • People are also hung up on the words "more probable than not" in the report as somehow being a defense. They act like this is a criminal trial, and that this does not meet the reasonable doubt defense. But what looks like hedging are actually legal terms. As the Washington Post notes, the preponderance of the evidence (more than 50 percent) is the standard in a civil case -- and in the NFL. That means that Brady can be punished.
  • There are two reasons there was no smoking gun here: the Patriots wouldn't let McNally be interviewed a second time, after the investigators uncovered more evidence, and Brady, as the Boston Globe notes, "refused to make his phone records, text messages, emails, or any other documents available for the investigation." That doesn't get Brady off the hook, though.
  • For those who say "Well, why should Brady help the investigation," they don't understand the NFL's rules, which say that "Failure to cooperate in an investigation shall be considered conduct detrimental to the League and will subject the offending club and responsible individual(s) to appropriate discipline."
  • Both Tom Brady Senior and Don Yee whined that the NFL ran a sting operation on Brady and the Patriots before the AFC Championship Game. The sting defense doesn't usually work with perverts who think they are arranging to meet 12-year-olds in person, only to meet a federal agent. It probably won't work here, either. On the one hand, Brady Sr. and Yee are proclaiming Brady's innocence. On the other hand, they're whining that the NFL didn't tell Brady that they knew of his cheating beforehand. What an incoherent defense. 
  • Brady was particularly smug in his claim that he wasn't able to "digest" the report. Really, Tom? There is a report that could keep you suspended for many games, and you didn't read it? C'mon now. And what happened to Jim Gray, the guy who browbeat Pete Rose? He let Brady off the hook in their puff piece of an interview.
  • As my friend Staci points out, ask Alex Rodriguez what happens when there are text messages against someone, and the person involved doesn't show evidence of their own to refute it.
  • Speaking of which, A-Rod gave Cousin Yuri nearly $1M and a house and a car and health insurance. All Brady gave his minions breaking the rules for him was some swag he didn't even pay for. And it was clear how much these employees despised Brady. On the other hand, Barry Bonds, the guy we were supposed to hate, got such loyalty out of his trainer that the guy went to jail rather than rat him out. Says a lot more for Bonds!
  • At the risk of going "blue" in the Squawk (I usually try to keep this blog PG-rated!), I must share my friend Joe's assessment of Brady: "Be nice to the people who deflate your balls. If not, they will bring you down."

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