Americans can stomach dodgy deals but not when it comes to sports

Deflategate is a new scandal that at once seems piffling and egregious

Tom Brady lifts the Super Bowl trophy (Getty Images)

A funny thing happened when automation came to parking garages for municipal employees here in Miami last year, when swiping a card replaced paying cash to an attendant. Revenue from the lots suddenly doubled; same number of cars, same number of garages.

Sticky fingers syndrome. When investigators arrived at the office overseeing the garages they found cash and receipts stuffed in boxes and drawers. Thousands of dollars and more receipts had found their way to the home of one employee, who was charged on Wednesday. More arrests are expected.

Americans have become almost inured to dodgy dealings in government, including among elected officials. Just this year we’ve seen Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey charged for taking cash and luxury jet rides from a donor. This week we read the obituaries of Jim Wright, a once formidable speaker of the House, who in 1989 was forced to resign and slink back to his home in Texas after being caught taking an illegal $145,000 gift from a property developer in Fort Worth.

But fallen heroes and slippery behaviour in the world of sports bother them a whole lot more. Sports are meant precisely to be about sportsmanship and level playing fields. It’s for that reason that the governing bodies of all the major sports here brook no jiggery-pokery when they see it. Ask disgraced cycling champion Lance Armstrong, who lost his reputation to performance-enhancing drugs. You may also want to speak to the New England Patriots, winners of this year’s Super Bowl.

Theirs is a new scandal that at once seems piffling and egregious. It has a name – Deflategate – because it has to do with the squishy balls the team brought to the field one game-day in January when they beat the Indianapolis Colts, a vital victory that propelled them to the Super Bowl, which they also won, against the Seattle Seahawks. Questions swirled immediately: had someone let air out of the balls on purpose to make it easier for the team’s quarterback, Tom Brady, to grab hold of them and pass them?

Almost certainly so. A report into the affair commissioned by the National Football League (NFL) and released on Wednesday offered a convincing case that two locker-room employees with the Patriots had together conspired to ensure that the balls deployed would be at least two pounds per square inch below what the NFL legally requires, precisely to give an unfair edge to Mr Brady, who by the way is one of the most famous, revered and highly rewarded athletes in this country.

The report, which runs for 243 pages, of which 68 are appendices and a scientific analysis of external factors such as temperature on football pressures, makes for vivid reading.

One of the two men called himself ‘‘the deflator’’ in a text message to the other man. It also describes how the same individual made off with the balls just after they had been tested for pressure and took them into gentleman’s toilet under the stadium for 100 seconds, just enough time to let air out of them, before taking them on to the field.

The sentence that stuck out more than any other: “It is more probable than not that Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities.” In other words Mr Brady is a big, bad cheat. His first response late on Thursday was squishy too. “I don’t really have any reaction. It has only been 30 hours, I’ve not had much time to digest it,” he said. “When I do, I will be sure to let you know how I feel about it.”

I happened, for unrelated reasons, to be in the Miami office of Norman Braman on the day the report came out. Scholars of American football will know him as a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. His response? Total disgust.

“It’s a disgrace. It’s cheating and it’s uncalled for. It’s awful, and terrible for football and it’s terrible for fans,” he said. “I think they should be severely punished.”

He uttered “severely” with grand emphasis, but predicted the NFL would not go so far as to strip the Patriots of this year’s Super Bowl title. He did note, however, that the team has been caught behaving badly before. It and its coach were fined $750,000 in 2007 for improperly videotaping an opposing team’s defensive strategy hand-signals. “It’s the second time for the Patriots, and these things aren’t coincidences.”

Even if “more probable than not” would not satisfy a court of law – and we are not talking federal crimes here – it does fit the NFL’s own definition of culpability. It seems certain, therefore, that it will indeed announce stern punishments for all those involved in the coming weeks. Standing to suffer the greatest damage, particularly to his hitherto blotless resume, is Mr Brady, of course.The report absolved the team’s coach and owner indicating they were unaware of the unexplained hissing coming from the loos.

Unlike the parking garage scam, Deflategate didn’t involve bundles of cash, though it seems Mr Deflator expected and received a steady stream of autographed kit – balls, caps and so on – from Mr Brady in return for his labours. But winning the Super Bowl in the end is all about money, of course. Big money. So why not rig things a bit to help the team on its way? The fans, as well as you and I, know why not.