Roger Goodell Doesn't Plan On Apologizing To Robert Kraft For DeflateGate
BOSTON (CBS) -- It's easy to forget now, given how much time has passed, but when "DeflateGate" was a national point of concern raging at full force, it was a big deal. A very big deal.
And so when Patriots owner and NFL heavy hitter Robert Kraft stepped to the podium in Chandler, Ariz., and declared that he expected an apology from commissioner Roger Goodell once his team was cleared of any wrongdoing, it was, likewise, a very big deal.
Yet no matter what is revealed in the eventual release of Ted Wells' investigation into the deflated footballs, that apology from Goodell will not be coming.
"Well, no, because here's the thing, and I've said this to Robert and I've said this publicly: Our job is to protect the integrity of the game," Goodell told ESPN Radio on Friday. "If there are questions about the potential for some type of violation, it's our obligation to go find out whether it happened. There are 31 other teams that want to know that the rules were followed."
Goodell, as per usual, is leaving out some significant aspects of the story. Namely, he's purposefully omitting the fact that a team in his league was targeted for the two most important weeks of the season, amid Super Bowl preparations, for violations they may or may not have committed. While the NFL is within its right to investigate claims from other teams, the manner in which it went about that investigation was undeniably atrocious. Seemingly every day, a new leak from the league office revealed some sliver of information, some partial truth, that provided just a tiny piece of the overall puzzle.
As a result, many members of the football media -- as well as the national media -- reached conclusions about the Patriots that may very well prove to have been founded on little facts and truth and instead on leaked information from sources who held serious grudges against Bill Belichick and his Patriots team.
Since the initial report out of Indy that the NFL was investigating the footballs' inflation level, and since ESPN reported 11 of 12 footballs were significantly underinflated, we've learned quite a bit. NFL VP of officiating Dean Blandino spilled the beans that -- whoops! -- the PSI levels were never recorded. Additionally, Colts GM Ryan Grigson said publicly at the combine that the Colts alerted the league to potential tomfoolery regarding inflation levels prior to the AFC Championship Game being played. Meanwhile, the NFL denies ever having any clue about the inflation suspicions.
And then you have VP of game operations Mike Kensil making a move from the press box down to field level during the AFC Championship Game, after some suspicious activity was reported on the sideline. As it turns out, that dubious behavior was actually performed by an NFL employee, one who was trying to steal footballs so that he could sell them for profit. He's since been fired -- and the NFL apparently had known about that guy's misbehavior prior to that night as well.
Add it all up, and the only thing the Patriots might have done wrong is having the person in charge of the footballs go to the bathroom on his way to the field. We don't know what he did or didn't do in that bathroom, but we know a whole lot more about a whole host of other goings-on that evening. And none of it looks great for the NFL.
In the midst of all that, Kraft strode to the podium and delivered a surprise declaration in Arizona.
"If the [Ted] Wells investigation is not able to definitively determine that our organization tampered with the air pressure on the footballs, I would expect and hope that the league would apologize to our entire team, and in particular, Coach Belichick and Tom Brady, for what they have had to endure this past week," Kraft said.
The gauntlet had been thrown down. And then the Patriots managed to still win the Super Bowl.
Surely, if the Patriots are exonerated from Wells' findings (and evidence suggests they will), an apology from the man in charge of that league office would be in order. But unsurprisingly, Goodell does not feel he did anything wrong.
Don't let that make you think that Goodell is hoping the Patriots are found guilty, though.
"I hope there is nothing from this, but we didn't make any judgment about whether there was or wasn't," Goodell told Mike & Mike. "We allowed Ted Wells to do that. That's our job, and that's what we're going to do. I'm not going to apologize for doing our job."
Well, that's the thing, Rog. Nobody would ever say that you need to apologize for doing your job. You merely need to apologize for doing your job very poorly. Because of information leaks from compromised sources in your office, the weeks leading up the biggest event on the entire sports calendar was marred with negative stories of cheating that might have never happened. If it never did, you ought to apologize. But we wouldn't expect you to all of a sudden start doing that now, so this "development" comes as a surprise to nobody.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.