[stupac2]

Stupac, honestly, you don't see any intent here by the Patriots to skirt the rules?

No! At the beginning of the week I thought that was the parsimonious explanation, but as more information has come out it looks like they complied with the rules to the letter. Unless you think that Belichick is straight-up lying to us (which, whatever you think of him, would be unprecedented, and stupid because any attempt to alter the balls would certainly be caught by one of the zillions of cameras in the stadium) they told the refs to fill the balls to 12.5 and the refs did it. Additionally, every indication is that after that point the measured low pressures at halftime are explained by natural means.

Maybe you think that I'm letting my fandom get to me, but I'm not a blind homer and I think anyone who follows me on this board should know that. Whatever you think of me, I try my damnedest to keep my biases out of stuff like this, hence the thinking earlier this week that there was some attempt to skirt the rules). It's also kind of weird because, if I were offered a choice between Stanford being a perennial contender and the Pats being a perennial loser or vice versa, I'm taking the former every single time with no hesitation. I care way, way more about how well Stanford does. This whole "deflategate" thing just annoys me because, first, there's a lot of bad science happening around it, and second I find it discomfiting how many people blindly hate something that I like (which I guess I should just get over because it's just sports, but blah).

[stupac2]

Stupac, honestly, you don't see any intent here by the Patriots to skirt the rules?

No! At the beginning of the week I thought that was the parsimonious explanation, but as more information has come out it looks like they complied with the rules to the letter. Unless you think that Belichick is straight-up lying to us (which, whatever you think of him, would be unprecedented, and stupid because any attempt to alter the balls would certainly be caught by one of the zillions of cameras in the stadium) they told the refs to fill the balls to 12.5 and the refs did it. Additionally, every indication is that after that point the measured low pressures at halftime are explained by natural means.

Maybe you think that I'm letting my fandom get to me, but I'm not a blind homer and I think anyone who follows me on this board should know that. Whatever you think of me, I try my damnedest to keep my biases out of stuff like this, hence the thinking earlier this week that there was some attempt to skirt the rules). It's also kind of weird because, if I were offered a choice between Stanford being a perennial contender and the Pats being a perennial loser or vice versa, I'm taking the former every single time with no hesitation. I care way, way more about how well Stanford does. This whole "deflategate" thing just annoys me because, first, there's a lot of bad science happening around it, and second I find it discomfiting how many people blindly hate something that I like (which I guess I should just get over because it's just sports, but blah).