NFL Decline - Real Reasons

President Trump would like to be in control of everything including the NFL.

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Unfortunately he wants to take credit for something that has nothing to do with the real reasons why viewership is down for the NFL this year. Whether players stand for the anthem or not has nothing to do with the actual play of the game.

I am glad that players are taking a non-violent protest of inequality in the United States. Naysayers only disagree with this protest to try to appear better when they actually cast more negativity on those who do not support the protest. If anything, President Trump's tweets are violent and should be considered a hate crime when he wants to deprive someone the opportunity to make a living in their profession because they have made a non-violent protest.

Colin Kaepernick was the first to kneel during the anthem last year. There were a

number of horrible shootings of black people primarily by the police during a short time period which spurred on protest. Kaepernick was playing with at a peak level last year and decided to opt out of his contract to play elsewhere. What hurt was when the Dolphins Ryan Tannehill was injured in the pre-season and the Dolphins signed Jay Cutler who is a known quitter and completely unreliable. Cutler is the joke of the league how he throws interceptions and doesn't run out plays that are not intended for him. It is a wonder how the Dolphins have won 2 games this season. They would not have lost 2 games this season if Kaepernick was their quarterback.

Kneeling during the anthem does not affect the game or how it is played. There may be a small few who do not want to watch NFL games for this reason, but there are many more reasons why most like myself do not care to watch NFL games as we did in the past. The first reason why we fell out of love with football is the dictatorship that is ruling it.

Roger Goodell has acted as trial and jury along with lawmaker during his whole term

as commissioner of the NFL. So many times over the past couple of years Goodell has made rulings to fine and suspend players when the justice system has not found the player as being guilty. Players like Ray Rice and Tom Brady are just 2 of many that someone should write a book about how many times Roger Goodell has injured players and his league. The teams make the league, but the players make the teams great.

These individuals that make up the NFL teams do play a violent contact sport that wrestling and hitting happen on every play. These hits have negative consequences beyond just the expected physical injuries to the point people are losing their minds with CTE. The league makes so much money for so many people that they will continually try to make things better as long as it they can still play.

Watching football is like watching someone smoking a cigarette. You know that smoking will cause lung cancer and people do it anyways. We know that these players will have serious mental illness and will be a tragic story that we will hear on Sports center one night. What hurts even more is those big hits were what made the league exciting to watch and now he get scared when we see those same hits.

Best Deflate-Gate Video, Equipment Manager

Patriots Press Conference Cold Open

#Deflate-Gate Part 2, Interview Reaction

I liked Florida State University football program since Dion Sanders when I first started watching football, but I had a change of heart after hearing about the favors the local law enforcement did for players in trouble. I also liked Tom Brady and the New England Patriots despite the spy gate scandal, but I have some serious doubts after today's media conferences with Bill Belicheck and Tom Brady. I did not believe that spy gate was that big of a deal since the information age has taken over with high speed internet and HD image quality.

I feel that sports is competitive and reciprocal. In high school we studied what the next team that we were going to face did to us last year. There is not enough money on the line to figure out what they did in practice and therefore we had enough information based on what they did in the game. If teams don't want other teams to know their plays, then they should decoy their plays like they do in baseball. Decoys are deployed by Chip Kelly with the Oregon Ducks and in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles. Therefore spy gate with BS and I felt the Patriots got a bad rap for it.

With my beliefs of spy gate, I watched Deflate-gate unfold and wanted to believe that the Patriots did not intend to deflate the footballs before the game. Knowing that balls lose pressure from a warm room to a cold environment, I wanted to believe that was the case. The other possibility might have been that the balls were checked on Friday and lost some air pressure before the game on Sunday. Then the Colts footballs might have been checked outside in a colder environment and therefore would not have changed the air pressure due to the temperature. Sounds like a big circle of what if's that only the league officials would be able to answer. The next issue is if the league officials didn't do their jobs right, they certainly won't confess on their end. 

This morning Bill Belicheck gave a great media conference. Some serious doubt came into play when he started off saying that he didn't know what happened to the footballs before the game, but then explained all of the different variations of footballs he forced his team to practice with. He might not have known about the change in the air pressure for the games balls Sunday, but he passed the buck to Tom Brady to discuss it with the media. Belicheck continued to deflect the question stating that he already discussed the answer.

This afternoon when Tom Brady spoke, he came across as calm and cool, "like the other side of the pillow" (Miss you Stuart Scott). Unfortunately, Tom did not come across as being credible because he said that he checks the balls out before the game. If the balls felt fine before the game, they might have had the correct air pressure. He might not have held a game ball during the game other than on the field and might not have remembered how it felt especially since he was not asked about it until the next day.

I have a hard time believing that he didn't notice that the balls were under-inflated during the game unless he could not feel his hand because it was so cold. I do not believe that is the case even in his old age of 34 as he has played in cold weather the prior week. As you can see in the picture, Tom Brady did not use a glove during the game, so he felt each football and he knew they felt softer. The next question was who made the call to go with the back up balls for the 2nd half as Tom Brady was on fire in the 3rd quarter?

Knowledge of the ball changing pressure due to temperature change is a basic fact of physics. It is a fact that I knew before ever taking a physics class as I liked playing basketball growing up. I remember walking outside with my basketball and bouncing it and it didn't come back up. I was 10 years old and obviously didn't have the experience that I do now and know to air up the ball before going outside with it. I might not feel the difference at first, but would know how to check it out quickly. I played basketball more than football growing up, but I am sure that someone playing quarterback for all of these years would know how to check a ball to tell if it was good to throw or was going to suck.

As the reporters said after the media conference, it was Tom Brady's chance to come clean and he didn't. Will the equipment manager come clean since he knows how Tom likes the football? Will he say that Tom Brady didn't know anything about it? 

Like I said in my past blog, there are cameras everywhere picking up everything from someone scratching their junk to picking their nose. All they have to do is watch the balls on each video tape to determine what happened by who and when.