TOUGH TIMES: Coach Bill Belichick has the NFL on his back, but he may soon have to worry about Pats owner Robert Kraft as well.
How many more times does Bob Kraft want to feel as deflated as the footballs his team used last Sunday in the AFC Championship Game?
How many more times does one of the classiest owners in sports want to stand up and apologize, as he did in 2007 to a room full of his fellow NFL owners following his team's conviction in Spygate, for the sporting crimes and misdemeanors of his coach?
How many more times does he want his integrity and that of the model organization he's built to be called into question by the apparent actions of a brilliant but slightly paranoid control freak? How much longer does he let Richard Nixon run his team?
Despite all the noise about deflated footballs, sideline chicanery and "full' investigations by the same guys who couldn't find a videotape in a casino camera, those may be the biggest questions Belichick faces this week after the NFL found 11 of the 12 balls used by the Patriots in their 45-7 dismantling of the Indianapolis Colts were under-inflated by two pounds of air (PSI) each.
The NFL has already established the balls examined by referee Walt Anderson before the game were fully inflated and properly checked. So how did 11 of them come up 15 percent underinflated by halftime on a 51-degree night? If air encased inside leather tires leaked out that fast, no one would ever get home for dinner.
One or two leaky footballs might be a coincidence. Eleven of 12 is not.
No one knows for sure yet how those balls came to be deflated but that's how Anderson found them by halftime after the Colts complained. Between the time he handed them to the Patriots' equipment crew and when he confiscated them no one had possession of them but the Patriots.
My father had a saying for situations like this. It's one the pom-pom crowd won't like but it fits perfectly in this dirty, little mess.
"If you hear hoof beats behind you in the park, assume it's a horse not a zebra," he used to say.
Here's the problem: if everybody's doing these things, why does the same guy keep getting caught? And he's supposed to be a genius?
In 2007, there was Spygate, the illegal taping of coaches hand signals after the league sent a letter out specifically forbidding it. In that case, Belichick received the biggest fine in NFL history — $500,000 — and the club was fined $250,000 plus the loss of a No. 1 draft choice.
There have been accusations of the existence of two radio frequencies from the coaches box to the sidelines when only one is allowed.
Belichick's once and present top assistant, Josh McDaniels, left for Denver and in less than two years was fined $50,000 when a former Patriots videographer working for the Broncos illegally taped a 49ers walkthrough before a game in London.
The club claimed McDaniels never looked at it but he was fined for failure to report the transgression and fired 38 days later with $7 million left on his contract.
So where does it end, Bob Kraft? Only Kraft can decide that, but if I were commissioner and I was sufficiently convinced the Patriots tampered with those footballs after the referee's examination, I would tell Kraft, in 48 hours I am going to suspend your coach for the Super Bowl unless you do it sooner.
According to various reports the league is "angry" "distraught" and "disappointed." What Belichick has to worry about is what his boss is. Is Kraft, "angry," "distraught" or "disappointed?" Or is he, like many fans, squatting like those three brass monkeys, covering his eyes, ears and mouth?
It didn't take long for the locals to circle the wagons. Hey, Eli Manning has the balls he's going to use in a game scrubbed for three days, the New York Times reported. Hey, Aaron Rodgers said he tried to slip overinflated footballs into the ball bag. Hey! Everybody does it!
The difference is you can do what you want to those balls before they get to the referee. He determines what's legal. What you can't do is stick a pin in them after he's done.
Some will insist it's all jealousy on the part of the losers, who aren't as clever as our Bill. So how come nobody made those charges against Vince Lombardi or Paul Brown or Don Shula or Chuck Noll or Bill Walsh? Why are they only jealous of this guy?
How did 11 of those 12 balls end up deflated after Walt Anderson gave them to the Patriots? Bill Belichick better hope Bob Kraft believes a zebra trotted by.