ifmanis5 said:
The Pats lost the PR battle in the 2 weeks before the SB. Getting that back isn't even an option. We're too far down the road for that. Winning in court is all they have left on this matter.
That's a bingo.
Overturning the penalties is basically the only way anyone will pay attention to whatever happened. The Wells report is 250 pages of smear and the initial reporting was deliberately slanted by the leaks. There's just too much info for anyone to care about it, and with the general opinion of the Patriots either being outright cheaters (from Spygate) or habitual line-steppers (strange formations, tuck rules, Belichick being sinister and crafty, etc) it's actually kind of ridiculous to expect anyone to feel otherwise. If you ask someone what their opinion is on a subject they have little detailed knowledge of, such as an average football fan about the Patriots, you can't expect a good answer. Do you think Brady might have had something to do with footballs that might have been underinflated? Sure. I mean, they're cheaters already, why wouldn't he?
The Wells report does a good job of deflecting attention away from the issues in it to a general observer. It's like a performance of a magic trick, where the magician spends most of his efforts drawing your attention by speaking and using his hands. In the first 50 pages or so a big deal is made of Exponent, Exponent's credentials, and how Exponent's findings cannot explain the footballs used in the game. Exponent is the beautiful assistant demonstrating how the lock is just an ordinary lock which cannot be unlocked without a key, or how the box which is about to be cut in half is just a normal box by piercing it all the way through. Any extraordinary behavior - the magic - cannot be explained by any ordinary viewer's assumptions about reality. That is, you cannot pierce a box with a person laying in it without the person being pierced, and footballs do not lose air on their own.
If you're watching carefully enough, though, you can see the trick.
According to Exponent, regardless of the assumptions made with respect to the gauges used pre-game and at halftime, the measurements recorded for the Patriots game balls at halftime cannot be entirely explained by the Ideal Gas Law (or variations thereof) when applied to the most likely game conditions and circumstances.
It doesn't matter that the Wells Report makes an assumption about which gauge is used, because Exponent's testing shows that it doesn't matter and that something is wrong if either of Anderson's gauges were used. Thus, it's fine for Wells to assume that Anderson's recollection about which gauge he used was wrong because it doesn't affect the conclusion. What about the assumptions about the environment in the locker room, then?
Our scientific consultants informed us that the data alone did not provide a basis for them to determine with absolute certainty whether there was or was not tampering, as the analysis of such data is ultimately dependent upon assumptions and information that is uncertain. Based on the testing and analysis, however, Exponent concluded that, within the range of likely game conditions and circumstances studied, they could identify no set of credible environmental or physical factors that completely accounts for the Patriots halftime measurements or for the additional loss in air pressure exhibited by the Patriots game balls, as compared to the loss in air pressure exhibited by the Colts game balls.
Exponent puts in a disclaimer saying that ultimately it's all dependent upon assumptions and uncertain information, and based on these assumptions there is no credible explanation. The showmanship here is drawing your attention away from the fact that these are assumptions -- they're likely game conditions -- and drawing your attention away from the fact that there might be other likely game conditions which were not studied. With that sleight of hand, uncertain information becomes reality.
Of course, these are big time lawyers we're talking about, and Exponent has over 900 employees in 20 states, so they don't want to put their name on logic like that which wouldn't stand up to scrutiny.
Even putting aside the experimental results, we believe that our conclusions are supported by the evidence in its entirety.
Fifty pages of handwaving and talking about Exponent and how great Exponent is and Exponent say they can't explain it except by tampering, and then -- forget about Exponent. In fact, I'm just going to take Exponent's reports and data and
throw it all in the garbage put it in the appendix. You can
come up and look in the garbage look in the appendix, but you don't need to because these text messages are the only evidence you need.
This is the equivalent of the beautiful Exponent assistant hurrying off the stage with the equipment. You get to examine it closely before the trick, not after.
