Friday, January 23, 2015

Deflategate? Clever title, not

One month until pitchers and catchers report for the Minnesota Twins, so in the meantime we have to put up with this Super Bowl silliness between two teams I don't hate nor particularly like, so what fun is that?

Most people have rightfully and thankfully forgotten that I was a sportswriter in my former life (Argus Leader, Tea & Harrisburg, Rock Valley, Luverne). Back then people actually paid me to write about sports. And then silly people still bought those newspapers. So it's in my blood and I still like to dabble here, and it's free!

My question regarding deflategate and the Patriots is: Why does the PSI of a football matter? If each quarterback brings his own football into the game when the offense takes the field, who cares? As long as they are using the same brand, type and size of football, and they don't add wings to it, why should it matter if Tom Brady likes his footballs at 12 psi and Mark Haugen likes his at 14 psi? (NFL regs say footballs should be 12.5 to 13.5.) If Brady wants to throw a flat football, let him. It's only going to hurt his kicker if there is a scramble at the end of the game to kick a field goal and the kicker doesn't get to bring in his own ball.

Whatever PSI a quarterback wants, let him use it.

This is the biggest nothingburger of a controversy since the invention of nothingburgers and the Y2K panic.

Can we talk about Gisele instead?

My other bug-a-boo about deflategate is: Why does every controversy have to be "gate?" People do realize that Watergate was a hotel, right? Unless the scandal took place in a hotel with "gate" in it, call it something else.

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