This is about as weak as sports scandals get. All teams, all quarterbacks, doctor footballs to their liking. Eli Manning’s game balls take months to scuff up just right. Aaron Rodgers inflates his as much as possible. Brad Johnson, who led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl title in 2002, claimed he paid a couple of guys $7,500 to secretly scuff up the footballs used in the championship game.
Like doctoring baseballs, the practice of tinkering with pigskins is widespread and commonly accepted as just something everyone does. The only rule: Don’t get caught…
All the pearl-clutching is even more galling when you consider we’re talking about the NFL here. This is a sport where dudes ravage their brains and bodies in between Bud Light commercials, all for a league that is comically indifferent to violence both on and off the field. Deflating a few footballs is hardly on the same moral plane as, say, domestic abuse and a front office coverup of it.
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