CNN)The evidence listed in Wednesday's "Deflategate" report is eye-catching:
-- Text messages between a part-time New England Patriots employee and an equipment assistant with talk of cash, free shoes and autographs.
-- The part-time employee -- a locker room attendant responsible for 12 footballs before the AFC title game -- spending 100 seconds in a bathroom after game officials had approved the balls for play.
-- Measurements taken at halftime after a team that is losing tips off the league about footballs that appear to be too soft.
-- The Patriots' star quarterback and the equipment assistant suddenly exchanging phone calls in the days just after news of underinflated footballs blew up.
The report, prepared by attorney Ted Wells, found that "it is more probable than not" that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was "at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities" of locker room attendant Jim McNally and equipment assistant John Jastremski, who has been with the team since 2001.
The report also found that "it is more probable than not" that McNally and Jastremski "participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee" in violation of NFL rules in the AFC Championship.
"Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady ... was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities ... involving the release of air from Patriots game balls," Wells wrote.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/06/us/nfl-deflategate-report/
Everybody seems focused on how the Patriots didn't need to do this as they blew out the Colts in the playoffs but seem to forget how close the Ravens game was, 35-31. Brady's soft balls could have been the difference. If Flacco had done the same thing he may not have thrown 2 int's in the last 4 minutes.
He called himself the deflator. A longtime locker-room attendant for the New England Patriots, Jim McNally, was responsible for controlling the air pressure in the footballs that quarterback Tom Brady would use on the field.
But investigators implied that Brady had lied when he denied any knowledge of the operation or of McNally’s name and role. They found that Brady had spoken to Jastremski on the phone for more than 13 minutes starting shortly before 7:30 a.m. the morning after the A.F.C. championship game, their first phone conversation in six months. At Brady’s behest, for the first time that Jastremski could recall, they met in the quarterbacks’ meeting room later in the morning.
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Brady told investigators that he wanted to discuss how the Super Bowl balls would be prepared and that the subject of the previous day’s underinflated balls and the growing scandal “may have come up.”
The report said Brady had declined to provide documents or electronic information, such as text messages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/s...ed-footballs-on-purpose-report-says.html?_r=0