One Painfully Funny Line From NFL's Motion To Oppose Tom Brady's Appeal Window Extension
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the NFL and NFLPA are bickering in court over the most inane and insignificant matter.
Today's installment involved NFL attorney Paul Clement filing a motion in opposition to the request from Tom Brady's newest lawyer, Ted Olson, in which the NFLPA requested that the 14-day window to file an appeal to be reheard en banc by the Second Circuit be extended by an extra 14 days. It was, merely, a request to turn a two-week window for appeal into a four-week window for appeal.
It's not a significant matter in any tangible way, but the NFL felt fit to fight the request, because ... well, because that's how the NFL and the NFLPA do business.
Accordingly, Clement wrote the three-page letter explaining why the NFLPA should not be granted the two-week extension. It claims that both parties agreed to an expedited process, that an extension would work against that agreement, and that the NFLPA provided no valid reasons for being granted the extension. (You can read the details from the NFLPA's request here and decide for yourself.)
While the request was not a particularly captivating read (full document here), there is one line in particular that jumped off the page, and it came in the penultimate paragraph:
"Both the parties and the Court expedited the consideration of this appeal in an effort to ensure that a cloud of uncertainty would not hang over the 2016 season. It is thus imperative that rehearing proceedings do not frustrate the collective effort to avoid that undesirable result. The first preseason game is just over three months away. Time remains of the essence."
Time. Remains. Of the essence.
As a reminder, this was a filing in the month of May during the year two thousand and sixteen for a case stemming from a few puffs of air which may or may not but probably were not missing from footballs in a football game in January 2015 which was decided by 38 points.
It is the 16th month of this grand fight which never needed to happen in the first place. It's a fight that has wasted tens of millions of dollars and countless hours from federal judges. Roger Goodell could have handled the entire ordeal in a matter of hours, but because of him, it now drags on in its 471st day.
And yet, all of a sudden now that the NFL has the upper hand, "time remains of the essence."
Please.
Here's a quick refresher course on the course of action the NFL deemed appropriate last year:
Jan. 18 -- AFC Championship Game
Jan. 23 -- Ted Wells hired
May 6 -- Ted Wells findings released
Duration: 109 days to conclude something was "more probable than not" to have happened and that Tom Brady was "at least generally aware" of that actionJune 23 -- Brady's 10-hour appeal hearing at NFL headquarters
July 28 -- Goodell announced he'd be upholding the suspension
Duration: 36 days for Goodell to take none of the new information into consideration, only to reach the conclusion that he was right all along
It's that second time frame, in particular, that stands out. How it took Goodell a month to decide that his own decision was correct is anyone's guess, but it's probably not a coincidence that he made his announcement just two days before Patriots training camp officially began. Though Brady was almost certain to appeal, it certainly would have behooved the NFL to make the proposition of appealing that much more difficult for Brady by forcing him to do it at a time when he's typically preparing to play football. Had Goodell announced the upholding of the suspension in, say, early July, Brady would have had a few weeks open on his schedule, thus making the path a bit easier for him to digest before having to deal with preparation for the season.
Instead, Goodell announced that he believed he was just and fair on July 28, forcing Brady to pursue his appeal throughout the preseason and not learn his ultimate fate until one week before the regular season began.
Time was not "of the essence" last year, when the NFL stood to benefit from an unnecessary delay. This year, with the tables turned, the league's position has changed.
After thriving off the "cloud of uncertainty" last year, when Brady forced to wait for months to learn of Ted Wells' findings and then had to wait another month to learn his fate from Goodell, the NFL is now gravely concerned about the same issue arising this year. Now, the NFL is terrified that the ongoing court case may interfere with ... the preseason? (The precious preseason, as noted by the NFL, is still months away. The NFLPA requested a two-week extension.)
Of course, while the filing has its merits for the sake of proving just how far these two sides will go to bicker in front of the public, it's also disingenuous. Again, this is a situation that could have been dealt with a matter of a day or two in January 2015. But somewhere along the way, the NFL realized that having people talk 24/7 about a frivolous potential violation is not the worst thing in the world.
Every second spent discussing "DeflateGate" is one second not spend examining the ongoing concussion litigation, or the findings by The New York Times of the NFL fudging numbers on concussion reporting, or the words spoken by Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas about how badly his brain has been damaged from playing football.
Every second spent discussing "DeflateGate" is one second not spent examining the NFL's ongoing issue with properly handling domestic violence, as evidenced by the Chiefs this past weekend drafting a player who just last summer pleaded guilty of beating his pregnant girlfriend.
Every second spent discussing "DeflateGate" is one second not examining the bewildering comments on draftee Laremy Tunsil from Goodell, who said that seeing the man's life dreams come crashing down on live television is "part of what makes the draft so exciting."
The NFL may indeed hope the process at the Second Circuit is handled expeditiously, but league execs are no doubt keenly aware that having this PSI fight play out for another year would likely save the league's PR team from working too hard to put out the fires that seemingly always keep popping up.
In any event, Monday's court filing has now put it on the record: In the 471st day of "DeflateGate," time is now of the essence. The league's lack of self-awareness continues to soar to new heights.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
