{"id":6410,"date":"2015-05-07T16:24:26","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T16:24:26","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-05-07T16:24:26","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T16:24:26","slug":"deflategate_didn_t_have_to_happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2015\/05\/07\/deflategate_didn_t_have_to_happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Deflategate Didn\u2019t Have to Happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: The National Football League has a problem, and it need not be where it is today. It is unbelievable to me that this was allowed, and it certainly looks like it was allowed to get to this point. And none of this need have happened. Now, all over the Drive-By Media you have one of the, I guess most respected, admired, envied players in the entire league, has undergone overnight a dramatic image shift. The Drive-By Media is salivating over destroying Tom Brady. He\u2019s a cheater.<\/p>\n

I know our culture loves to take people at the top down. I know we love taking people down a peg, and we love it when they take themselves down. It\u2019s commonplace. But, man, there is so much joy, particularly in the Drive-By Media over the predicament that Brady is in. It\u2019s not to say that he hasn\u2019t played a role in putting himself in this predicament. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: But let\u2019s go back to the National Football League here for just a second, because let me just tell you up top here rather than build up to this, the thing that amazes me the most about this. If you go back to the game in question, the AFC championship game, the Indianapolis Colts alleged that the Patriots were playing games with the footballs and were underinflating them to make it easier for the quarterback to throw them. At that point the NFL could have — and, if you read this report from Ted Wells, they had every opportunity to stop everything in progress and look into it at that moment. Even if it meant delaying the start of the game, they could have reexamined the footballs.<\/p>\n

Remember, Walt Anderson, the referee for the game, said for the first time in 19 years the balls were not presented to him pregame. One of the equipment people on the Patriots is responsible for taking the balls to the locker room, took them there, deposited them for awhile, but the referee didn\u2019t get to examine \u2019em. They left, went to the bathroom, in there for 100 seconds and obviously some air was taken out of some of them. And Anderson said (paraphrasing), “For the first time in my career as a ref, something happened here that shouldn\u2019t happen.” <\/line><\/p>\n

The point is, the National Football League allowed that game to be played, highly suspicious that the balls were improperly inflated. You realize, had they taken a different course of action, they could have delayed the game whatever it takes, maybe not at all, because they had plenty of advance warning via the allegation. They could have taken steps to go get those balls back from the field, examine every one of them, throw out the ones that were under- or improperly inflated, make sure that all the balls were correct and according to regulations, and start the game. Instead, they allowed the game to start apparently fully aware that some of the balls did not meet regulation. <\/p>\n

Now, if the report is true — and it doesn\u2019t use this terminology — the reason that would happen would be to be able to catch the team violating the rules in the act, which is what happened. Now we know that a number of balls were underinflated and we know that the equipment people in the Patriots locker room were making adjustments to them. And we are relatively certain, it\u2019s probable, you know, using the lingo that Ted Wells uses here that Brady was aware of it, that Brady ordered it, that these guys thought it was to be done because this is the way Tom Brady wanted it done. <\/p>\n

So now the NFL is where it is today. One of the most respected and best quarterbacks in the history of the game is now under a cloud of suspicion with his integrity damaged to the point that people may not ever be able to think of him the way they used to. They\u2019re looking at some sort of punishment that has to be handed out. I don\u2019t have any idea what, and I don\u2019t think anybody else knows, but I\u2019ll just tell you what I\u2019ve read. <\/p>\n

A reporter for the Miami Herald says it could be up to a full season. I saw Brian Kilmeade on Fox News say it\u2019s gotta be four to six weeks, maybe a hundred thousand-dollar fine. Other info people are talking about two games, four games, a fine here, a fine there. But that\u2019s not all. There\u2019s Bill Belichick and Bill Belichick in this report is barely mentioned, other than to say he didn\u2019t have any idea what was going on, therefore he\u2019s been exonerated. <\/p>\n

Well, if he\u2019s not punished somehow, Sean Payton over there in New Orleans is gonna be really curious. Because you remember during the Bountygate investigation against the Saints, the head coach of the Saints, Sean Payton, was suspended for a full season precisely because he didn\u2019t know what was going on in his locker room. He didn\u2019t know his players were running a bounty program. And for that — not having control — he was suspended for a whole year. <\/p>\n

The defensive coordinator was suspended indefinitely for running the bounty program. So if Belichick escapes any punishment, what\u2019s Sean Payton gonna do? On the other hand of this, you have the Patriots opening the season on Thursday night in September against the Pittsburgh Steelers now looking at the possibility that a quarterback nobody has ever heard of is gonna be quarterbacking the team while Brady is serving a suspension. <\/p>\n

And all of this appears to be to be unnecessary. And it leads me to wonder, somebody really must want to get the Patriots for something. They allowed an NFL game to be played with balls they knew didn\u2019t meet regulation, just to catch somebody or a team or people involved in probable cheating. Now, you look at the suspension of Brady. Look at Ray Rice. Ray Rice was suspended for a season.<\/line><\/p>\n

Domestic abuse, granted, but still. It was a full season. How many other players have been suspended for a game or two or four games because they took a poke of a doobie, tested positive for marijuana? They didn\u2019t cheat the game, didn\u2019t do anything to attack the integrity of the game. They might have done the things that didn\u2019t reflect well on the field (i.e., the NFL logo), but this? Why, this goes to the integrity of the game. <\/p>\n

And you\u2019re gonna have a lot of players keeping a sharp eye on what, if any, punishment is handed down to Brady, and they\u2019re gonna be comparing it to previous players and their punishments — and they will compare — and you\u2019re gonna have the media. You\u2019ve got the Drive-Bys now wanting Brady\u2019s scalp. I mean, you can\u2019t go through the Drive-Bys and find anybody here… I haven\u2019t found anybody yet who does not want Brady severely reprimanded and punished for this.<\/p>\n

Now, we\u2019ve got the audio sound bites to back it up. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019m still struck, and maybe I don\u2019t properly understand this. And if so, I\u2019m sure some of you will correct me. But all of this seems like it needn\u2019t have happened, and the fact that they let a game be played with what they knew to be underinflated footballs, and they could have found that out before the game — which they knew — and fixed it before the game? They need not be in this situation. And they don\u2019t want to be here. They don\u2019t want to have to suspend the number one player in the game. They don\u2019t want this.<\/p>\n

None of this is anything that anybody in that league is looking forward to dealing with. <\/p>\n

This is unbelievable.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, the thing that I have not closed the loop on that I\u2019ve left for you to assume — and I apologize for this. This will be the fourth time I\u2019ve said this today, so I apologize for the redundancy. But let me, to make sure I\u2019m understood about this, remind you again that I sit here to this moment still stunned the NFL let this happen. <\/p>\n

They let a game, a championship game be played knowing that the equipment had been tampered with. They knew the footballs or highly suspected the footballs had been tampered with, and they expected they\u2019d been tampered with by somebody high up in the Patriots. The Colts had alleged this, and not just on that game day, but previously in the season, and other teams had also leveled similar allegations. <\/p>\n

Things happened in the pregame such as the referee Walt Coleman saying for the first time in 19 years the game balls were not brought to him, which is required by the rules. The game balls, from both teams, have to be brought to him for inspection. And they have to be in the officials\u2019 locker rooms 15 minutes before the game. He didn\u2019t get \u2019em. Right there, they could have stopped everything and said, “Hey, what is going on?”<\/p>\n

<\/a>Because they knew already before that happened that allegations had been made that the Patriots were deflating the footballs, particularly on cold and bad weather days like this day could have been, to help Brady grip the ball and throw it more easily. Then they had video and they found out that the locker room guy, whose texts they have back and forth with the… They\u2019ve got an equipment guy, and the Patriots game day officials locker room attendant, texting back and forth.<\/p>\n

One of them is really ticked off at Brady. I mean, F-bomb here, F-bomb there about Tom. “F— Tom!” Because apparently Tom was complaining the balls were too big and weren\u2019t deflated enough, and this guy says, “Okay, I\u2019m gonna fix it, but I want a jersey, and I want some bling and I want some autographs,” and the other equipment guy said, “Okay, okay. Fine. Just do it. Do it for Tom.” So they\u2019ve got all this in the aftermath of the investigation.<\/p>\n

Before they had any of this, they knew that these balls had been tampered with and they let the game go, and that\u2019s why people are calling it a sting. “The NFL ran a sting.” That\u2019s what everybody was saying. Even back then, just shortly after this game, when this whole controversy surfaced, the NFL was accused of running a sting, meaning they let the game be played with equipment not up to regulation in order to entrap and catch the perps. <\/p>\n

Had they not done that, we wouldn\u2019t be here. Had they stopped everything… They wouldn\u2019t have had to delay the game. “Wait a minute. We haven\u2019t examined the footballs. We\u2019re gonna make sure, before this game starts, that every football is up to snuff,” and if they found some that were underinflated, throw \u2019em out, get \u2019em replaced or inflate them to regulation. Play the game, and then do your investigation. But they played with those.<\/p>\n

Now, that tells me… This is what I\u2019ve left open and left for you to conclude on your own, and I\u2019m just gonna say it. That\u2019s why I said, “There\u2019s Spygate out here, and out there you have a lot of people who believe that we still don\u2019t know everything that went on with Spygate.” Remember, they destroyed the tapes, and there are people — particularly Jets fans — who think that it wasn\u2019t just videotaping, that the Patriots were intercepting radio signals and listening to offensive play calls. <\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve heard people speculate that the Patriots were able to listen to the Seahawks\u2019 play calls in the Super Bowl. I don\u2019t know that that\u2019s true, don\u2019t misunderstand. I\u2019m telling you what people are saying. So you got Spygate out here, which a lot of people still think hasn\u2019t been firmly dealt with. Some people report that even the commissioner regrets to this day he didn\u2019t suspend Belichick instead of just fining him. The point is that what if the reason they let this happen is because somebody somewhere thinks the Patriots are doing a whole lot more than this and just want to get to the bottom of it and expose it. <\/p>\n

Somebody give me an alternative. Will you tell me why they would run a sting and let this game — I mean, this is the AFC championship game, and I don\u2019t care that nobody gave the Colts a chance. It was a 45-7 blowout, and, by the way, the footballs were corrected at halftime, and Brady played better with the regulation footballs in the second half than he did with the underinflated balls in the first half, for what that\u2019s worth, 45-7 blowout. Don\u2019t say, “Well, they let it go \u2019cause the Colts didn\u2019t have a prayer anyway.” But no, they don\u2019t want to be in this situation today looking to have to suspend the marquee player of the game. <\/p>\n

Do you really think September 10th or whenever it is that the season opens in New England and the Steelers are in town, Brady\u2019s not on the field, do you want the story of that game to be this, three, four months from now, still this, which it will be? Nobody wants that. But the steps they took guarantee that that\u2019s what\u2019s gonna be the story for the rest of the season. This. And the whole hit on the league as a whole, not just Patriots and Brady, but the whole league now takes a hit terms of integrity.<\/p>\n

So they can\u2019t do a slap on the wrist here. There has to be some sort of really firm punishment on the one hand. On the other hand, over here you\u2019ve got the business, you\u2019ve got the TV networks, like NBC. NBC\u2019s probably already on the phone to the NFL: “You better not suspend Brady for that opening game. I don\u2019t care what you do after that, but he better be playing that opening game.” All of this pressure being brought to bear here. And despite that, somebody wanted this to happen. I\u2019m not trying to sound conspiratorial. I\u2019m just trying to make it all make sense. And you have to admit there\u2019s nobody better than me to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: The National Football League has a problem, and it need not be where it is today. It is unbelievable to me that this was allowed, and it certainly looks like it was allowed to get to this point. And none of this need have happened. 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