My Super Bowl blog.

Okay, let's face reality. 11 of 12 footballs did not deflate themselves. 11 of 12 from the Patriots and none of 12 from the other team? If you think that's just a coincidence you are deluding yourself. Someone deliberately deflated those footballs and quite obviously Tom Brady knew about it.

The question is what should the punishment be.

Deflate-gate reminds me a bit of the George Brett Pine Tar incident. For those of you too young to remember, in July of 1983 the Kansas City Royals were playing the New York Yankees. George Brett had just hit what appeared to be a crucial homerun that gave the Royals a late lead. But Yankee manager Billy Martin said "Not so fast!" and pointed out that Brett had too much pine tar on the bat he had used. Originally the homerun was disallowed and Brett called out. The Royals protested the game and their protest was eventually upheld. The homerun counted. The Royals won the game.

Now the question in the pine tar incident was never about if Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. He clearly did. The question was the punishment. "Let the punishment fit the crime" it is said. Did having too much pine tar on his bat mean that what appeared to be the game winning homerun  should be overturned? Or did it merely mean that an umpire should tell Brett "Hey, take a little of that pine tar off your bat." MLB finally ruled (quite correctly I think) the latter should apply.

That's the question right now in deflate-gate. Does Brady & co. deflating the footballs mean they should be disqualified from the Super Bowl? Of course not. It's way too late for that. A $25,000 fine and a loss of a draft pick is what the rulebook seems to call for

Of course, I think most teams out there would quite willingly pay a $25,000 fine and lose a draft pick for the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl. I know the Minnesota Vikings certainly would!

Tom Brady and Bill Belichik did themselves no favors in speaking out over the incident with their "Golly gee whiz, how did that happen?" denials. They should have merely said "Hey, we have a game to prepare for" and let it go. Because this will be the real punishment for the New England Patriots: Loss of esteem. Like Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire and all the others in baseball, we will no longer look at them as we did before.

Champions? No. Real champions don't cheat