Quote:He also knew that the balls went missing.


 

It's not his job to give a cheater enough rope. It's his job to make sure that the game is fair. "Sorry Mr. Irsay, but we'll let your team play at a disadvantage, and maybe miss out on the Superbowl because of it, just so that we can gather some additional evidence against the Pats." This is not to mention that measuring low pressure minutes after measuring the correct pressure would have been a smoking gun. Measuring low pressure on balls that were out in the cold for over an hour proved nothing.

It is the teams responsibility to provide regulation balls and It is the refs responsibility to check the balls once before the game. There was nothing to say why the balls were briefly missing and you can't make the presumption that they were missing in order to be deflated based solely on what the opposing team says. For all they know at the time, the whole thing could have been a ploy by the colts to create an additional distraction which they hoped to exploit. So in reality, there is nothing to justify delaying the game. NE had their responsibility to provide regulation balls and are accountable to doing that. There is nothing fair with relieving NE of that responsibility or the accountability that comes with it.

 

They planned on measuring the balls again at a time that wouldn't create a delay or other distraction from the game and did that by measuring the balls at half time.

 

When rules are made, there is reasonable expectation that the rules will get followed. Of course if a rule gets circumvented, then it is the responsibility of the league to prevent further circumvention. But to create rules on top of rules in order to prevent any form of circumvention would just create an infinite cycle of redundant rulemaking to cover each rule written previously. There wouldn't be time to play the actual game that all these redundant rules were meant to protect.

 

Instead of creating a system of prevention that is totally impractical, the league has done what people have done for thousands of years and that is instead of preventing someone from breaking the rules you hold them accountable for when they break the rules.

 

Sadly, the concept of accountability is a foreign idea to many in the modern age. No one thinks they should be responsible for their own actions anymore.

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