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On the surface, knowingly tampering with footballs just minutes before (or during?) the AFC Championship Game in which your team is heavily favored seems, in the words of former Patriots safety Rodney Harrison, "laughable.''

It is also incredibly audacious, stupid and paranoid.

It's almost as ludicrous as videotaping the defensive signals of opposing teams after the league sent a memo specifically forbidding the practice and warning there would be serious repercussions if the decree was ignored.

Spygate, Deflategate. Connect the dots and it appears to be more of the same, a haughty coach obsessed with winning who will do anything to get an edge -- and will gleefully tweak the league office in the process.

Therein lies Belichick's problem. A man who has made football his life's work, whose reverence for the game and its history is well-documented, has forever forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his own integrity. Earlier this month, 85-year-old Don Shula, the winningest coach in NFL history and the only one to oversee an undefeated season, with the Miami Dolphins in 1972, was asked about New England's coach. The congenial Shula replied: "Beli-cheat?"

It spoke volumes about the perception of New England's resident football genius. Shula is a man of character and credibility. His words hold weight, far more than a blustery Ray Lewis embarking on a rant dismissing Tom Brady's career because of the tuck rule. That made no sense and had no merit.

This deflation controversy is a different case altogether.

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Why can't the coach trust his players' talents and his own intellect and lean on the excellence of the organization he has so painstakingly built into a sustainable football juggernaut? It's like a prizefighter pummeling his opponent for six straight rounds, then feeling compelled to throw a sucker punch after the bell has sounded. Why? You had the fight won.

I'll say it again: There's no concrete evidence yet that Belichick or the Patriots did anything wrong. But even the most ardent New England fan has to concede that when 11 of the 12 balls are discovered to be deflated, that's a mighty interesting coincidence.

If the NFL finds the Patriots culpable (and that is still a big "if" at this point), it should lay the hammer down. If Belichick turns out to be a repeat offender in the skirting of the league rules, he should be suspended for the Super Bowl.

It's not about the deflated balls. It's not about how much of an advantage (if any) it provided the Patriots or Tom Brady.

It's about the integrity of the sport and the arrogance of a football coach who, if guilty, will have once again shown that he thinks he is bigger than the game.
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It's about the integrity of the sport and the arrogance of a football coach who, if guilty, will have once again shown that he thinks he is bigger than the game.

Because the NFL investigation is taking its sweet time (they haven't spoken to Tom Brady yet), and because it'll never reveal anything useful anyway, we're forced to piece together the details and the timeline of how the Patriots' deflated-ball scandal played out. This interview helps immensely: it's an interview with D'Qwell Jackson, the first Colts player to touch one of Brady's alleged soft balls.

We'd already learned that the Colts grew suspicious of the Patriots' footballs during their game back in November, and had alerted the NFL to their concerns. But two pieces of information revealed by Jackson in a conference call yesterday shed more light on how things went down in the AFC Championship: 1) Jackson did not personally notice anything wrong with the ball he intercepted, and 2) Officials took the Patriots' balls out of play in the first half, much earlier than had been previously reported.





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Jackson, who claimed he didn't even know there was a controversy until the team flew back to Indianapolis late that night, said he doesn't handle footballs often enough to tell the difference between, say one with 12.5 psi and one with 10.5 psi. "I definitely wouldn't be able to tell if one ball had less pressure than another," he said.

This doesn't necessarily conflict with what was first reported. Newsday's Bob Glauber, who was the first to discover the NFL's investigation, wrote on Monday morning that it wasn't Jackson who first noticed something wrong with the ball, but rather the Colts equipment manager he gave it to after his interception. And sure enough, Jackson said yesterday he handed the ball off because he "wanted that ball as a souvenir."

Much more interesting is Jackson's statement that the Patriots' balls were taken out of play in the first half. Previously, we'd only known that they were formally inspected at halftime.


Jackson does, however, recall one interesting moment during the first half that has something to do with the latest controversy. He recalls, during a television timeout, there was an especially long delay that prompted him to approach an official.

The game official mentioned something about their efforts to locate a usable football. Shortly after, Jackson noticed that the Patriots were using the Colts' footballs late in the first half. Jackson said it was odd to him that New England couldn't find a football to use, especially in the AFC Championship Game.

Interesting! (All of this qualifies as "interesting." Not "nefarious," not "criminal," certainly not "suspendable." It's still a lot of fun to follow, and I am excited to see what comes out next. It's a scandal in every sense of the word, but no one ought to be scandalized.)

Jackson, saying what everyone's been saying (and then been shouted down for saying), declared that ball pressure wasn't why the Colts got mollywhopped.


"It wouldn't have changed the outcome of the game," Jackson said. "They outplayed us. We didn't match their intensity. I don't feel slighted at all personally. They created turnovers, they ran the ball on us. They won that game because of their intensity — not the pressure of a football."

And so ends the Ballghazi controversy. I trust no one will ever talk about it again.

Among the many people who had contact with the Patriots pigskin used in Sunday's AFC championship — which were reportedly underinflated — were the ball boys. And one former ball boy (who did not take part in Sunday's match) told NBC News that his goal was always to prepare the ball to the quarterback's preference and hope they passed inspection, and that it would have been very difficult to tamper with them afterward.

Eric Kester, who was a ball boy for the Chicago Bears in 2003, says he can't speculate about the controversy dubbed "Deflate-Gate," but he remembers how the preparation worked — starting with the delivery of factory-fresh balls a few days before a game.

"We would then work with the quarterbacks to customize the balls to their liking. This involved scrubbing them with stiff horsehair brushes to rub off the leather's slippery silicone sheen, and occasionally inflating or deflating the balls a very small amount, which I believe is legal to a degree. Quarterbacks are very particular about the way a ball feels in their hand, and we worked meticulously to match their particular preferences," Kester said.

Two hours before kickoff, he would bring the balls to the referees' locker room for inspection.

"I recall them having a pressure gauge in the locker room, but most often they just squeezed the balls, turned them over in their hands a few times each, and inspected the laces. I don't recall them ever rejecting one of our balls," he said.

"My thought process was, 'Let's get the balls exactly the way our quarterback wants them, and if the refs reject one or two before the game, no big deal. But there's no harm giving them our ideal balls and hoping they make it through inspection.'"