BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I’m definitely siding with New England on this one if for no other reason than the very idea of “deflategate” is utterly stupid and outlandishly hypocritical on 
its face. In fact, should it turn out that the Patriots were in fact complicit, I’d support a celebratory toast to them with cups of heavily spiked Orange Pekoe! Why? Because EVERY team in the NFL CHEATS, and they do it in EVERY game they play, and contrary to this preposterous “deflategate” bullshit, that kind of CHEATING actually HAS a bearing on the outcome of games! Huh?, you say. Come on, people, they’re called “penalties”! Last year’s biggest CHEATERS were the Seattle Seahawks with 144. Well, at least that’s how many times they got CAUGHT. Only the football God knows how many times they didn’t. New England came in second with 133. Indianapolis took third with 127, and so on down the line to Jacksonville with 73. Overall, NFL teams CHEATED a “known” total of 3,514 times!
That’s right, folks, every time a team “holds,” or commits “illegal use of hands” or “pass interference,” or “grabs a facemask” (and the list goes on) they are CHEATING! They’re knowingly BREAKING THE RULES! Sure, they get penalized. But more often than not they don’t get penalized “proportionally.” For instance, if your opponent would or is likely to catch a pass and take it in for a touchdown, you’re a hell of a lot better off to interfere with him and prevent him from doing so. The risk or certainty of getting caught is far less than the opponent’s reward would be for catching it. Giving up some penalty yards is a whole lot better than a guaranteed 7 points! Not to mention that there’s absolutely no guarantee that your opponent is going to be able to score on succeeding tries anyway! Ah, but you CHEATED! You knowingly broke the rules. You knowingly did it in order to ILLEGALLY gain an advantage, and you damn well may have CHANGED THE OUTCOME of the game to boot! But guess what? your team isn’t going to lose a draft pick or be fined a quarter of a million dollar$ as a result. Such is the utter stupidity and outlandish hypocrisy.
The real question should be: what the hell difference does it make how much or how little the football is inflated except possibly for punts or extra points?! Why shouldn’t EACH quarterback be able to use his own footballs and whatever inflation pressure he so chooses?! Who gives a damn?! What goddamn difference does it make so long as EACH quarterback gets to use his own footballs with the pressure of his choice whenever he’s got the ball?! As a matter of fact, why should ANY quarterback be penalized unduly for having been born with smaller hands? Trust me, in all of professional football you’d be hard pressed to find two sets of quarterback hands that are the same size and strength. Talk about your unequal playing fields!
Here’s my advice to all of the pundits and fans and all of the teams trying to undermine the New England Patriots: get a freaking life! Stop wining, moaning and mashing your sour grapes! Stop exposing yourselves as jealous, envious, piss poor losers! Stop showing how much you resent a winner! Stop the stupidity, the hypocrisy! Stop pretending you only care about the “integrity” of the game! You say you care about the “integrity” of the game? Then stop the CHEATING that goes on on nearly EVERY play in literally EVERY game you analyze, comment on, coach or play in! Cut the bullshit!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fed up early stage septuagenarian who has actually been most of there and done most of that. Born and raised in the picturesque Pocono Mountains. Quite well educated. Very lucky to have been born into a well-schooled and somewhat prosperous family. Long divorced. One beautiful, brilliant daughter. Two far above average grandsons. Semi-retired (how does anyone manage to do it completely these days?) and fully-tired of bullshit. Uncle of the Editor-In-Chief.