Delflategate: Time to Focus Elsewhere

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Yesterday, I had the distinct displeasure of catching a surprise press conference from Bill Belichick, Head Coach of the New England Patriots regarding new information about the current scandal facing the team, whether or not they deflated footballs in the AFC Championship game to gain an advantage over the Colts. 

I say it was a displeasure because my phone blew up with alerts from the NFL and ESPN that news was forthcoming and here I initially thought, oh, they caught someone or someone was going to confess to the whole mess. Sadly, that was not the case.  What we were "treated" to was a nonsensical and bizarre rambling from the coach as he walked us through the process of how his team prepares game balls for each game and well, I switched channels about halfway through and came back a little later on to watch the press rip into Coach Belichick about the Spygate scandal instead.  

It was in essence, a waste of time to even have that press conference.  I get it, the Patriots are in a lot of hot water. This is the second time in years that they appear to have cheated to gain an advantage. I get that fans are angry and I've heard everyone's demands for punishments, but when we have come to a press conference to tell us how a team prepares game balls, this is simply getting out of hand. Especially since the NFL is investigating the matter, and I'd rather them take their time and do their due diligence than screw this up like they did the Ray Rice matter.  

They'll handle the punishment as necessary, and I'm fairly certain no one will be happy with the punishment either as is often the case, but really...enough is enough when it comes to this mess. It's dominated the headlines, it's been poured over to the point of overkill as we can now see, so my hope is that we move on from it as quickly as possible and focus our attention on the bigger matter at hand, The Super Bowl. 

We have other stories to talk about. Specifically whether or not the Patriots can stop Marshawn Lynch or if Richard Sherman's arm is healed up enough to where Tom Brady cannot attack him in the passing game all day. This is the big one folks, and while I understand it won't be easy to not continue to fawn over how many games the Pats may have done this in and all the other minutiae, Super Bowl XLIX is here, let's celebrate that instead while we wait for the league to figure the whole thing out. 

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