(01-21-2015, 05:42 PM)misterwhizzy Wrote: If they're both playing with the same balls, why does it favor one team over the other? Although I do think it's interesting they kept the fully-inflated one for their kicker.They aren't playing with the same balls. Each team has 12 game balls that are inspected by the refs before the game for proper inflation. So Pats use their balls and Colts use theirs. It is legal for them to burnish or break them in, but not legal for them to over/under inflate them.
Brad Johnson admitted in 2012 to paying to have the balls burnished before the superbowl, so that they were easier to handle. Is anyone talking about the Buccaneers superbowl win being tainted or Gruden being a cheat? Matt Leinart talking about game balls. Some even claim that the Raiders put helium in their balls in the 70's. So this isn't a new tactic. It's the same as stickum, Vaseline, burnished baseballs or corked bats.
If the league was serious about stopping this then they should supply the balls and not allow either team to modify them by deflating or burnishing them. They should also switch out the balls at halftime, so that neither team is switching out game balls with their own stash of modified balls.
Is it excusable that ALL teams do it to a certain extent? No! But if you're going to hand out a punishment for an acknowledged practice then a new rule needs to be put in place and countermeasures adopted. To me this smacks of sour grapes! Just like spygate it's OK to send someone to observe an opponents practice and to document their formations, but illegal to videotape it. The rationale is it's easier to videotape than to send someone who can interpret the call and recognize the formation.