Brady Beats NFL In DeflateGate Case

In the end, a court decided that Tom Brady was guilty of perhaps an honor code violation. Maybe he knew of someone’s wrong-doing. But the NFL had no right to suspend him for four games based on that possibility with no such rule on its books.

Judge Richard M. Berman put an end to the DeflateGate madness on Thursday, at least for the time being. He threw out the NFL’s suspension of Brady, clearing him to play in the New England Patriots’ Sept. 9 opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The NFL will appeal, but that process will likely not be expedited. This will continue to be background noise.

Berman’s ruling made it sound as if Brady had been dropped into Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.” Kafka’s novel (as defined by Wikipedia) tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Sound familiar?

Berman noted “several significant legal deficiencies” in the process NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell oversaw. Goodell’s failed to notify Brady of the specific offense he had committed. He also “improperly” deprived Brady’s counsel of any background documents or notes on the investigation. Berman said Brady “had no notice he could receive a four-game suspension for general awareness of ball deflation by others or participation in any scheme to deflate footballs, and non-cooperation with the ensuing investigation.”

Nor could Berman find precedent for the league issuing suspensions “based purely on obstructing a league investigation.”

The NFL could have handled this in so many other ways. It chose a high-handed path. We may never find out what Brady knew or did (if anything). But his offense (if he committed one) never apparently met the standard for a level of discipline that he could get a federal court to overturn.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .