RUSH: I want to do a juxtaposition here. Mike, I want to hear number one and two. And then we’re going to go to 14. All right? Here’s a juxtaposition of the so-called news media. As you know, I have been on a kick lately trying to — and it may be too fine a point, but one of the things I’ve been trying to illustrate is, there really is not a news media anymore. There is no media. Meaning, a group of people who go out and report and see things that none of us see and then come back and tell us what happened. That’s not what media is anymore.

There’s something else, and I want to illustrate here it here. We have a montage, first off, these are Sports Drive-Bys. We have Bob Ryan, the Boston Globe, Trey Wingo of ESPN, Randal Hill, the former wide receiver, ESPN commentator, J.A. Adande. Jorge Sedano from ESPN. These are Sports Drive-Bys and they’re all talking about Deflategate.

RYAN: To me this is the sports equivalent of the actual Watergate.

WINGO: Nixon was winning in Â’72, no matter if he bugged that hotel or not.

HILL: It’s just like Watergate. Watergate, you know, they were going to win that election. Patriots were going to win that game. But still, why go through this nonsense?

ADANDE: Watergate wound up costing Richard Nixon the presidency.

SEDANO: This is our Watergate. It really is.

RUSH: There you have it. This is our Watergate. The Sports Drive-Bys, they’re so excited. They have their own Watergate now over the inflation of footballs in the National Football League. Here is how the three major networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, this is how they led their newscasts last night.

SCOTT PELLEY: Tonight, caught in a pressure cooker: Is Tom Brady a cheater? Quarterback Tom Brady responds to reports that the Patriots used deflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game.

BRAIN WILLIAMS: On our broadcast tonight, full denial from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and from his coach, as a football inflation scandal remains bigger than the upcoming Super Bowl.

DAVID MUIR: On this Thursday night the breaking news, the scandal before the Super Bowl. The star quarterback, Tom Brady, answering the question: Are you a cheater? Tonight, how Brady explains those deflated footballs, who handled them after they were checked by the refs, and what now for the football star with the supermodel wife?

RUSH: That’s how the three major networks led their newscasts last night with everything else going on. The king of Saudi Arabia, well, maybe he hadn’t died before they went on the air. But clearly Yemen had happened. And the thing with Israel and Netanyahu. And any number of serious things happening in this country, and this is what they lead with?

Can I share with you how different it’s become? Many of you won’t remember this. Remember when Vince Lombardi died? Vince Lombardi, this is also an illustration of just how huge pro-football has become in this country. And you stick to the issues crowd people better hear this and learn this. The NFL, you just heard, the Sports Drive-Bys think it’s their Watergate. They’re salivating. The three major newscasts lead with it. Vince Lombardi, the coach of the Green Bay Packers. The Super Bowl trophy is named after him. Everyone knows who Vince Lombardi is.

He left the Packers once he figured out they didn’t have any players, and he went to the Washington Redskins. His deal included equity. And for somebody coming out of the World War II generation, equity was a huge deal. He had been given ownership in addition to be named head coach. Equity was a huge, huge deal to somebody coming out of the World War II generation, which Lombardi was. Then it was announced he had colon cancer shortly after a year or two of the Redskins.

On the day Vince Lombardi died, Walter Cronkite could barely pronounce his name. The announcement of Vince Lombardi’s death in the CBS evening news happened halfway through the newscast. It was just a five or ten second mention by Walter Cronkite, and they faded to black, went to a commercial break and came back and did the rest of the news. Cronkite could barely pronounce his name. It was almost like Cronkite barely knew who he was. That’s how inconsequential pro football was. This would have been in the early 1970s when Lombardi died. It by no means was the lead item in the news. And Vince Lombardi was as big as anything in pro-football when he died. He was pro-football. The Packers were pro-football.