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NFL Releases Deflategate Report
_xeno_ writes: You may remember back in February that Slashdot covered the NFL asking Columbia University for help investigating Deflategate, a scandal where the New England Patriots were caught deflating their footballs in order to make them easier to catch. The Patriots claimed this was simply a result of the weather, while their opponents disagreed. Well, it's been months, but we finally have our answer: the balls were, in fact, knowingly deflated by the Patriots (to no one's surprise). And while science can explain a little deflation, it cannot explain the amount of deflation seen during the game. Which isn't stopping Boston fans from attacking the science. The report stops short of certainty, though, concluding rather that deliberate underinflation was "more likely than not." Not everyone agrees that a conspiracy is necessary to account for the measured pressure readings.
The NFL should provide all game balls, selected randomly prior to each use. Bringing your own game balls is a pretty obvious vector for manipulating the game.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
It's not that they don't understand it, it is that they don't WANT to understand it, and therefore pretend that what the team said makes sense. Big difference.
Can we please stop tacking -gate on to the end of every scandal?
It's not clever when everyone is doing it, especially with trivial crap like this.
The average football fan is not an NFL player.
Why is this story here?
What is next a Real Housewives story?
And how many earned their college diplomas? After hearing radio interviews of Clinton Portis when he was playing for Denver, there is no way he managed to finish elementary without "help", let alone college. Don't get me wrong there are some players, maybe the majority who have earned their degrees, but there is a good amount who got special help.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
DeflateAnd
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DeflateOr.
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DeflateXor
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
At least the political stuff, the spying stuff, etc. is 'stuff that matters'. This? Just bandwagon jumping clickbait. Is there no way this story could have been spun to include testing standards, analysis of effect on the game, or something even vaguely, remotely applicable to the audience of this site?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This only means they didn't need to cheat to win that specific game. There is a preponderance of evidence that they were both knowingly and intentionally breaking the rules. This is called cheating to most people who aren't from the New England area. There is an established pattern of cheating through the entire season, which throws into question their "championship".
"The overall college graduation rate of about 80% among retired NFL players is much higher than the general population rate of 30%" - Oh please. Let's not try to compare the "diplomas" that football players get with real diplomas that are, you know, actually earned. Yes there are some notable exceptions. Steve Young and Andrew Luck come to mind as football players that also excelled academically. I'm sure there are others but they are in the vast minority.
College football is a big money business. Players bring in big money for their schools. The players have to keep up a minimum GPA or they are not allowed to play. If they don't play the school doesn't do as well and loses money. So the schools "help" the players by making sure they keep up their GPA. Help meaning they steer them towards fluff courses. At the end of it they give them a diploma, basically as payback for all the money they helped the school earn.
Claiming that they have earned the diploma in any real academic sense is laughable.
I'll never forget seeing that press conference with Dexter Manley, the former Washington Redskins player. That poor guy could barely read or write and yet somehow he had "earned" a college diploma. I blame the NCAA and the schools for allowing this to happen. It was really sad to see him struggling to read a few simple sentences. He didn't fail college. College failed him.
Or maybe they cheat 20 different ways, and they only got caught on one. Maybe they really suck when they stop cheating entirely.
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Not that you are guilty of all of what follows, but I have to point out the obvious.
Should a shot put be what ever size and shape someone else wants, or standard? How about a discus? Javelin? Don't want to compare to Olympic sports, how about NBA. Can a team inflate their balls to a different pressure than the other team, or wear them a certain way to gain an advantage? It is all standardized to make the competition as fair as possible.
The lengths that people will go to excuse a lack of fairness is really amazing. The lengths that people will go to in an effort of excusing cheating is just as amazing, but a bit more appalling.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.