RUSH: Here’s Marcia in Libby, Montana. It’s great to have you on the program, Marcia. Glad you waited, and welcome to the program.

CALLER: Yes, I have a question about the football thing. Why wasn’t the Super Bowl taken away from the Patriots for cheating since it’s a team sport, and so they all should be responsible, just not Brady?

RUSH: Well, that’s actually a very, very shrewd question.

CALLER: I thought that all along.

RUSH: Well, the short answer is the Patriots have been punished. The Patriots were fined a million dollars and lost a couple draft choices, and back in I think it was earlier in the summer, the owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft announced that he was going to accept the penalty for the good of the league to try to speed this thing along. And he didn’t say so, but it was obvious to a lot of people that he was trying to set the stage for the league to go easy on Brady in the appeal, which they ended up not doing, but the Patriots have been punished. Now, let’s go to your question about the Super Bowl, because what you’re really saying, this is a thing that’s amazed me from the beginning, and it’s about lost in all this.

CALLER: Huh-uh.

RUSH: The Indianapolis Colts complained that the footballs that the patriots were using could be underinflated and they asked them to check into it. The league did so, set up a procedure. The balls were supposed to go to the ref, Walt Coleman. They vanished for a period of time where the ball boys then took them to the bathroom where, the theory is, they deflated them to meet
Brady’s specs. Now, the point is, to me, anyway, it appears that the league let that championship game be played with the knowledge that those balls might have been tampered with. That has always amazed me.

It’s been said and denied by some in the league office, not everybody, that it was a sting, that they were trying to entrap the Patriots tampering with the balls, in which case they had to let whatever they were doing with the balls happen, and then they had to start the game with the balls improperly inflated if the Patriots were indeed doing what the Colts had accused them of doing. And it was the Ravens, I think, prior to that that alerted the Colts to it. So that has always been something that amazed me.

Another thing that amazes me is Tom Brady, whatever you think of him, is the marquee player of the NFL. It may be arguable to some people, but he is the best player in the NFL right now. And up until this he had a totally clean, wholesome, for the most part, I mean, had some tarnishes, public image. And why the league is trying to destroy that has got everybody mystified. A lot of people, not everybody. I think I, El Rushbo, have a partial explanation for it. But it’s still strange. But it’s ultimately about power, folks.