I disagree. They cheated and that's what stirred the hornets nest.
Quote
Originally posted by: nuggetboy
Just like Spygate, this is more about the Patriots being hated than engaging in illegal behavior.
Yesterday Howie Long stated that the Pats were not the only team recording sidelines, that many were doing it.
They however were the only ones punished.
Then this on ball deflation
— A former Jets quarterback has come to the Patriots’ defense — sort of — claiming deflating footballs is such a common practice that “every team does it, every game.”
Jeff Blake, who started his career with the Jets in 1992 and went on to play for the Bengals, Saints, Ravens and Bears before retiring after the 2005 season, made his claim during a radio interview Wednesday with Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone.
“I’m just going to let the cat out of the bag, every team does it, every game, it has been since I played,” said Blake, who made the Pro Bowl as a Bengal in 1995. ” ‘Cause when you take the balls out of the bag, they are rock hard. And you can’t feel the ball as well. It’s too hard.
“Everybody puts the pin in and takes just enough air out of the ball that you can feel it a little better. But it’s not the point to where it’s flat. So I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s not something that’s not been done for 20 years.”
Blake said he used to order ball boys to let the air out of his footballs just before games throughout his time in the NFL.
“Well, I would say [to a ball boy], ‘Take a little bit of air out of it. It’s a little bit hard.’ ” Blake said. “And then he’d take a little bit out and I’d squeeze it and I’d be like, ‘OK, it’s perfect.’ That’s it.”
Added Blake: “I guess it wasn’t a big deal back then, but it is now.”
— While we’re on the topic of Deflategate, apparently the practice is not limited to football.
Knicks president Phil Jackson admitted in a 1986 Chicago Tribune article that his Knicks championship teams of the early 1970s used to deaden the basketballs in order to compensate for New York’s lack of height.
Jackson claimed it helped the team’s rebounding.
“What we used to do was deflate the ball,” Jackson said in the story. “We were a short team with our big guys like Willis [Reed], our center, only about 6-8 and Jerry Lucas also 6-8. [Dave] DeBusschere, 6-6. So what we had to rely on was boxing out and hoping the rebound didn’??t go long.
“To help ensure that, we’??d try to take some air out of the ball. You see, on the ball it says something like ‘inflate to 7 to 9 pounds.’ We’??d all carry pins and take the air out to deaden the ball.”
Added Jackson: “It also helped our offense because we were a team that liked to pass the ball without dribbling it, so it didn’??t matter how much air was in the ball. It also kept other teams from running on us because when they’??d dribble the ball, it wouldn’??t come up so fast.”
