True Scandal of Deflategate Lies in the N.F.L.’s Behavior.....
THANKS ROGER!
***DO YOUR JOB****
JOE NOCERA/NY Times Sports said:John Leonard is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who roots for the Philadelphia Eagles, listens to sports talk radio when he is exercising, and teaches a course called Measurement and Instrumentation. When the Deflategate story broke after last year’s A.F.C. championship game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, he found himself fixated on it, yearning to dig into it from a scientific point of view.....
Numbers in hand, Leonard went to work. He bought the same gauges the N.F.L. used to measure p.s.i. levels. He bought N.F.L.-quality footballs. He replicated the temperatures of the locker room, and the colder field. And so on. When he was done, he concluded that Exponent had made a series of basic errors. Leonard’s work showed the exact opposite of Exponent’s conclusions: The drop in the Patriots’ footballs’ p.s.i was consistent with the Ideal Gas Law; the smaller drop in pressure in the Colts’ balls was not. (Leonard surmises that because the Colts’ balls were tested after the Patriots’ balls, they had warmed up again.).
By early November, he had a PowerPoint presentation with more than 140 slides. By the end of the month, he had given two lectures about Deflategate, the second of which he had videotaped and posted on YouTube. A viewer who watched the lengthy lecture edited it down to a crisp 15 minutes; Leonard agreed to let him post the edited version.
The edited lecture went up on YouTube on Dec. 1 and has been viewed more than 17,000 times (as of tonight has 23,374 Views). It is utterly convincing. Leonard told me that if an M.I.T. undergraduate made the kinds of mistakes that Exponent made, “I would force them to repeat the experiment and correct the analysis.” Based on his study of the data, Leonard now says: “I am convinced that no deflation occurred and that the Patriots are innocent. It never happened.”
He is hardly the only scientist to take that position. As Dan Wetzel pointed out in a recent Yahoo Sports column, scientists at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Chicago, Boston College, Rockefeller University, the University of Illinois and Bowdoin College — and others — have all come to the same conclusion......
In truth, the other owners’ resentment of the Patriots went beyond Spygate. In a league built for parity, the Patriots have become the football version of the old Yankees. They are never rebuilding, and always contending. There was resentment over Kraft’s Svengali-like hold on Goodell. And there was jealousy over the Patriots’ success. Although Kraft runs perhaps the most stable franchise in the N.F.L. — who else has had the same coach for 16 years? — many owners were convinced that the team’s success could only be explained by cheating. With the dour, unlikable Belichick as the coach, it was easy enough to believe. After all, he had run a spying operation.
Deflategate was their revenge. Taken at face value, slightly deflated footballs hardly merit the kind of harsh punishment Goodell meted out. In 2012, the San Diego Chargers were caught using “grip enhancing” towels; a fine of $20,000 was levied, and that was only because an equipment manager was said to have ignored a referee’s instruction. (The fine was later overturned.)
And the underinflated balls — if they were underinflated — certainly didn’t affect the game. In the first half, using the supposedly underinflated footballs, Brady and the Patriots took a 17-7 lead. In the second half, with the balls reset at the legal 12.5 p.s.i., the Pats scored 28 consecutive points, making the final score, 45-7.....
On Sunday, when the Patriots play the Broncos in Denver, the temperature is expected to be in the mid-40s, a little lower than the temperature in Foxborough, Mass., for last year’s A.F.C. championship game. There is likely to be some precipitation, just as there was last year, which will also affect the footballs.
At the start of the game, the Patriots’ footballs will be set at the lowest allowable p.s.i., just the way Brady likes them. At halftime, they will be lower, probably significantly lower.
After all, that’s what science predicts. And you can’t ignore the laws of science, unless, of course, you’re the N.F.L.
THANKS ROGER!
***DO YOUR JOB****
