Gavel Gamut
By Jim Redwine
(Week of 17 May 2015)
A LITTLE HOT AIR
Tom Brady is to be the paschal lamb for the NFL’s sins; good! I was for the Colts. It is reassuring to know the real experts believe a few plays with a couple of less pounds of air per square inch in an oblate spheroid of swine hide could have kept Indianapolis from the Super Bowl. I must have misread the 45 – 7 score; 10 – 7 with bad balls in the first half then 35 – 0 with good balls in the second half. The Colts should have kept quiet. Maybe the three touchdowns New England’s LeGarrette Blount ran for would have been incomplete pass plays.
I am pleased that our professional sports millionaires and their self-righteous billionaire owners are concerned about the immorality of what we euphemistically call games. I doubt I am the only fan who suspects that religiously following the rules in professional sports is as rare as truth in war. Also, I suspect most of us figure the team that prepares better, plays better and whines less will normally deflate teams that concentrate on minutia. You know, the old mote in an opponent’s eye instead of the log in our own.
It is not that I think all rules are unimportant. Standards make the playing surface level and the outcomes of games to more likely depend on skill and effort than tilted officiating or unfair advantages. Such rules as each team receiving four downs to make ten yards are essential if games are to have any value. When the officials in the October 1990 college football game between Missouri and Colorado gave Colorado a fifth down, Missouri was not whining when it protested and Colorado did not cover itself with honor by clinging to its “victoryâ€. Such critical rules must be enforced and, when they are not, there should be real consequences. A forfeiture sounds fair to me.
But, those who call for New England to forfeit the Super Bowl or for Tom Brady to be pilloried for two p.s.i. might ask themselves which team should be declared the true winner? I guess we could have Andrew Luck and Richard Wilson duel with limp pigskins at ten paces for the championship. The first one to draw blood seems a reasonable rule and in keeping with our volksgeist of coliseum type entertainment.
