By DAN VALENTI 

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015) — When you own the store, you get to carry whatever merchandise you wish. Even better if you are indifferent to making a sale or not. When you own the car and are behind the wheel, you decide where to travel. In this regard, THE PLANET continues with our pump-to-gauge coverage of “Deflategate.” Why?

1. We told you on our first post that we have been drinking the Patriots’ Kool-Aid since 1960.

2. We love the controversy, which gives us another excuse to engage in rhetorical battle over an essentially frivolous matter. How unlike politics, where think skins are a pestilence and unsophisticated pols bewilder us with their inability to understand that it’s never personal.

3. It gives us an excuse to keep talking football.

4. We love to keep NOT talking politics, especially the local hay-seed variety.

5. THE PLANET can remind everyone again that the New England Patriots won this year’s Super Bowl and will be reigning champs at least until early February 2016. We have only loved repeating this since we know that complexity isn’t in itself a crime (“but if we really say it, the radio won’t play it unless we lay it between the lines” — The Mamas and the Papas).

6. We own this-here site, and when you’re the owner … well, you know the rest.

7. The story has endless facets. In today’s post, we present more of them.

You Never Give Me Your Money

Given the wacky financial rules of this Big Time sport, if the punishment of Tom Brady and the team holds, the Patriots will actually end up making almost $3 million. That’s right. Make not lose. It works this way. They pay the $1 million fine, but they also won’t have to pay Brady. That’s four game checks, each worth $470,588.23. It comes to $1.88 million. Minus the million, and the Patriots end up $880,000 ahead. In addition, the teams receives salary cap credit for money they don’t pay Brady. Add another $1.88 million. That gives them more room in which to sign other players for the entire year. Bottom line, the team nets $2.76 million (Brady’s salary, the cap space, minus the fine). It’s even more, since the $1 million fine will go into the league revenues, of which the Patriots will have an equal share, since the money will in essence be laundered by the league.

Brady has to file by today at 5 p.m. if he wants to appeal the suspension through the NFLPA. The league has 10 days to set up a hearing. Under the league Collective Bargaining Agreement, the appeal would be heard by (we’re not kidding) NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell or someone he selects to sit in for him.

Avenues of Appeal: Via the Union and the Courts

Brady’s agent, Don Yee, said, “If the hearing officer is completely independent and neutral, I am very confident the Wells Report will be exposed as an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic.”

THE PLANET agrees. Brady will also have federal court as an avenue of appeal. That’s where his lawyer, Jeff Kessler, has had excellent results in battling the league on several high profile cases. They include the New Orleans Saints “Bountygate.” Kessler got a federal judge to overturn the suspensions of several Saints players. Earlier this year, he got the courts to reinstate Minnesota Vikings‘ running back Adrian Peterson.

The controversy has also been good for the sales of Tom Brady jerseys. According to online retailer fanatics.com, sale of Brady jerseys have doubled. It is now the hottest selling non-rookie jersey in the NFL. Sale of Patriots gear also has risen from fourth to first in all of football.

Goddell’s Incompetence Turned ‘Molehill’ into ‘Mountain’

Now we present this column from Yahoo! Sports’ Dan Wetzel:

With anger still simmering, an appeal coming and Ted Wells holding a fiery teleconference Tuesday to attack Tom Brady‘s agent (professionalism straight out of the WWE), it’s fair to say we are far from the end of deflate-gate.

A first-year attorney could lampoon Wells’ report, and Brady has hired the prominent Jeffrey Kessler, so expect the four-game suspension to be halved on appeal. We’ll see about the New England Patriots‘ lost draft picks and $1 million fine.

Still, at this point it’s worth contemplating the totality of evidence, as Wells likes to write. And what’s apparent is deflate-gate was more misdemeanor than felony, a molehill that commissioner Roger Goodell’s office turned into a mountain via incompetence, vengeance or both.

CAPTION: Roger Goodell and Patriots owner Robert Kraft don’t see eye-to-eye on the deflate-gate punishment. (AP)

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The idea a Patriots lackey carried game balls into a bathroom and took a little air out via a needle prior to the AFC championship game is a relatively moderate rule violation – and a comical bit of gamesmanship. It’s wrong and deserves punishment but not something that should merit a four-month, multi-million dollar investigation and the tsk-tsking of over-the-top pious law-and-order types.

“It’s not ISIS,” Tom Brady said back in January.

Wells should have focused on that line rather than whine about Brady not handing over electronic communication that may not exist (did he expect to find a confessional email chain with BBelichick@Patriots.com?).

… [T]he biggest take away from this tiresome ordeal is how Goodell’s lack of touch, vision, courage and guile created a circus.

Start with this: the story didn’t go big until ESPN reported about 24 hours after the game that the NFL had discovered that 11 of the 12 footballs were measured to be more than 2 pounds per square inch below the league minimum of 12.5.

That gave a subject that almost no one knew much about context, significance and potentially sinister intent. ESPN cited a nebulous “league source” at a time when it’s believed no one outside the NFL office knew the actual measurements.

Of course, that story wasn’t true. It wasn’t even close to true. Wells’ report showed that none of the footballs, each measured twice, were that underinflated.

At that very moment, the NFL had to know the story wasn’t true. Yet it did nothing.

So the league either created a fake story that was extremely prejudicial to the Patriots by leaking inaccurate information or someone else did it and the league office let it run wild rather than correct it with the actual air pressure measurements. It’s tough to figure out which scenario is worse for Goodell.

Once it appeared the Patriots were up to something big then the public and media rightfully demanded a serious investigation into what wasn’t that serious of a story. Goodell didn’t steer this to the truth and away from the heated condemnation of a signature player and the validity of a Super Bowl participant (and soon champion).

He instead commissioned Wells’ report, lending credence to a false narrative. Abdicating his authority to Wells led to the build-up for the report, which allowed a pack of Manhattan lawyers to serve as the cops, judge and jury.

CAPTION: Tom Brady is appealing a four-game suspension for his role in deflate-gate. (Getty Images)

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There is probably no report without that demonstrably false ESPN story. What would be the point?

Goodell could have looked at the pressure levels, saw that in the context of natural weather-related deflation it was fairly insignificant, doled out some kind of fine or even sanction and killed the kerfuffle in its tracks. It would have saved his league from all sorts of negative headlines and conspiracy theories.

A good commissioner would’ve done just that. He’s supposed to “protect the shield,” not provide talk radio fodder. There is just no way Adam Silver, Paul Tagliabue or David Stern lets this go down.

Even more bizarre, an NFL senior vice president emailed a letter to the Patriots stating that “one of the game balls was inflated to 10.1 psi … [and] in contrast each of the Colts game balls that was inspected met the requirements.”

Those assertions were untrue.

No game ball was measured below 10.5 and most were in the 11s, which is within an acceptable range of natural deflation. Three of the four Colts footballs as measured by one gauge were below 12.5, although also within the weather realm (it’s uncertain the NFL knew anything about Ideal Gas Law at the time).

Wells’ report brushed this off as “miscommunication” but it’s quite a miscommunication.

The NFL either had no idea what it was doing and was just making up facts without checking or, in a more draconian reading of it, it was trying to scare and/or silence the franchise into compliance by trumping up evidence.

What’s also clear is the NFL never cared about a whole lot about the inflation levels of footballs, probably because it doesn’t impact the game very much. The refs check the footballs pregame with a pressure gauge (which vary wildly) and that’s about it. It’s all a loose guess. In November, when Carolina and Minnesota were caught trying to doctor the footballs by warming them on a cold day, they each got a warning and everyone laughed at the story.

The Colts sent the league an email the week of the AFC title game with concerns about the Pats’ footballs. The NFL ignored it, instead employing a process so casual that there is a viable counterargument that the league never even proved the footballs were deflated.

Even then the competitive advantage is debatable, if not negligible. Brady was better in the second half against the Colts. As Peter King points out, across his career he is almost exactly as effective on the road (when Pats personnel would have no access to pregame footballs) as at home (when “The Deflator” might operate).

The Patriots and Brady seemingly deserve some sanction, if only for having someone carry the footballs into a bathroom, but this grew beyond reason.

This wasn’t important to the NFL until the NFL retroactively made it important.

… [I]s this how the commissioner’s office should work?

What happens when the next time it’s your team’s time?

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Pass the pump. Gouge the gauge. Patriots football is all the rage.

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“I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness.” — Ezra Pound, from “A Virginal.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.