Four Games in Fall (2017) - full transcript

[Robert]
For thousands of years
we've looked at sport

to produce our greatest heroes.

The ancient Greeks
to which we owe our heritage,

embraced the idea
of competition.

Fair level equal playing field
in which and from which,

according to rules,
superiority would emerge.

And so, we endowed
our great athletes

with great moral virtue,
whether they deserved it or not.

We wanted to believe
that if they were great

athletically,
they would be great morally.

[Jane]
Football is the way Americans



tell the story of our culture
to our children.

Football is the sport that most
conveys what we as Americans
think of our own selves

and culture, and how we want
to pass that along to our kids.

[Robert]
We draw our lessons from sport.

So many of our moral
lessons about fairness,

about honesty, about justice.

So I'm fascinated by, then, all
of the things around football,

and what does football
say about us as a society?

It's the most popular sport
by far, makes more money.

The players are
somewhat disposable.

There are a few stars,
but we really are very happy
to not know who

80% of the players on your
average football field are,
we have major health issues

that come up. Fans are blindly
loyal to teams and really aren't
all that interested

in hearing about
any of the negative things
about their sport.



[Robert]
Sport has become this
microcosm for life.

And so when we find
that it's polluted,

then it challenges everything.

It challenges everything
we hold dear.

When our great heroes
turn out to have

feet of clay, if we discover
that they're cheats,
then it undermines not only our

sense of who our heroes are
and should be, it undermines
our sense of self.

If we can't maintain
an integrity and an honesty
in our play space,

how can we ever aspire
to maintain it in
our general lives?

In the America I grew up in,
that I still believe in,
we loved guys

like Tom Brady. A guy who came
from nothing, a guy who
couldn't even start

for much of his career at
Michigan, who at one point

was behind the coach's son
on the depth charts.

He's 199th pick in the draft.
As a rookie, he was fourth

on the Patriots'
depth chart, and then turned
himself into the greatest

of all times.

[dramatic music]

[news reporter]
And Tom Brady
and the New England Patriots

are back
in the Super Bowl again.

[Michael]
Within hours, there was
a tweet by Bob Kravitz.

The NFL is investigating
possible ball deflation issues

with the New England Patriots'
footballs during the game.

[news reporter]
Both Brady and Belichick
responding to the allegations

on local radio shows.

[Michael]
There was a leak from the NFL to
ESPN reporter, Chris Mortensen.

11 of The 12 footballs were more
than two pounds underweight.

And that really changed the
complexity of the controversy.

And within hours of the story
breaking, the National Football

media went completely unhinged.

[news reporter]
The NFL has found 11 of
the New England Patriots,

12 game balls were
inflated significantly

below the NFL's requirements
League sources involved

and familiar with the
investigation of Sunday's AFC
Championship Game told ESPN.

[Robert]
Deflategate gets
its name instantly.

They caught the Patriots, once
again the cheating Patriots.

Now I hope they whack them.
They're going to get their
comeuppance.

[reporters]
Deflategate. Deflategate.
Deflategate.

[reporter]
From the morning shows
to talk radio,

instead of talking
about the Super Bowl,

all eyes are on the ball.

[George]
You go into that press
conference.

And Tom is wearing his hat
and everything's fine.

And this is no big deal and, "I didn't do any of those things."

I didn't, you know,
have any idea.

You know, I didn't alter
the ball in any way.

When I picked those balls out...

at that point, you know,
to me, they're perfect.

I don't want anyone
touching the balls after that.

I don't want
anyone rubbing them,

putting any air in them,
taking any air out.

[news reporter]
Source is revealing to ESPN,
the balls were under-inflated,

two pounds per square inch less than League standards, making them easier to grasp and catch.

[Robert]
The press conference
immediately following.

[Robert]
Belichick essentially said,
I can't explain it.

Uh, I had no knowledge
whatsoever of this situation
until Monday morning.

Mark Brunell cried on national
TV because he thought
Brady cheated.

I just-- I just didn't believe
what Tom Brady had to say.

[news reporter]
Source is telling
our sister Network, ESPN,

this is the play that led to
the discovery of what is being
dubbed Deflategate.

D'Qwell Jackson, a linebacker
for the Colts, intercepted
a pass by Tom Brady,

and allegedly felt the ball
was lighter than normal.

[Michael]
It led, of course,
to the NFL announcing

a quote-unquote
independent investigation.

It means that there's
a suspicion of wrongdoing.

You must have done something
wrong. Why would the NFL
investigate you?

What should have been, if to
a minor equipment violation, was
the top story in the country.

Not on the sports news,
on the network newscast.

[news reporter]
NBC Sports is reporting
the Deflategate investigation

is now centered on a 90 second
bathroom break taken

by a Patriots locker room
attendant before
the AFC Championship Game.

It became a national
Scandal of epic proportions.

There were people saying they
didn't want Belichick allowed
to go to the Super Bowl.

They were talking about taking
the Patriots out of the game

and having the Colts
go in their place.

[dramatic music]

I want to thank my family and
all my friends who supported me,

all my teammates. I love
you guys, this is for you guys.

[Jerry] They had Kelly Naqi, a reporter, go on outside the lines

and accuse the Patriots of
doctoring the kicking balls
in that game.

Adam Schefter came on and said,
"Not only did the Patriots not
doctor the kicking balls,

but there was a guy from
NFL Charities who stole
the kicking ball

in the middle of the game
and had been fired.

A, I assumed the Patriots
did it. B, I was delighted
they were caught at it.

C, I wanted them to be guilty
and I wanted them

to be punished severely for it.

The bigger picture here,
I think, is ethics, cheating,

and keeping
the integrity of the game.

The most important
thing here is,

was there a violation
of rules and if so...

how did that occur?
I think at this stage,

what we have to do is
let the facts dictate.

This report on Deflategate
that took lead investigators

103 days to produce,
puts Tom Brady firmly
in its cross-hairs.

Always played within the rules.

I would never do anything
to break the rules,

um, and I believe in fair play
and I respect the League.

[news reporter] But today, an NFL investigation led by Ted Wells found

it is more probable than not
that the three-time Super Bowl
MVP quarterback

was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities.

You have the Wells report saying
that there was a conspiracy

involving two Patriots
locker assistants.

McNally and Jastremski coupled
with some type of knowledge by--
alleged knowledge by Tom Brady.

It's only been 30 hours,
so I haven't had much time
to digest it.

After the Wells report came out,
about five days passed.

Roger Goodell
announced his punishments,

and his punishments
were enormous, unprecedented.

Seemingly, not in tune
with the actual rules.

They went for this, like--
this triad of punishments.

[news reporter]
Brady will not play
for the first four games

of the season,
this upcoming season, 2015,

will be suspended without pay,

that the Patriots will have
a one million dollar fine.

They'll give up their
first-round draft pick.

What do you make of
this four-game suspension?

These are serious issues.

There is nothing more important

to a Commissioner than
preserving the integrity
of the game.

[Andrew]
One thing that people still
watch live on television

at the time it's aired,
is NFL football.

[upbeat music]

That audience only sits down for
certain times together, right?

It's going to be the Oscars
or it's going to be an event,

like the Super Bowl or Sunday
when people watch NFL games.

As many as two-thirds of
all Americans, uh, tune into
at least one football game.

No other property, sort of, is--
operates in that--
in that ballpark.

The ratings are gigantic.

Advertisers really want a piece
of those NFL games,

and so broadcasters
really want to have

an NFL slot on their
broadcast window.

So that's CBS, NBC,
Fox and ESPN.

The NFL is a monopoly supplier,
which really gives them
a lot of power in the market.

During the lockout
a few years back,

The NFL players Association
was denied by one of
the television networks

to run their pro-union
advertising.

-Let them play.
-We want to play.

-Let them play.
-Let them play!

[Andrew]
If you're one of
the television networks,

you'd really like
to avoid falling out of

the good graces of the NFL.

I think the NFL and the NFL
players Association

is uniquely contentious
in the world of...

sports and Leagues
versus Unions.

[news reporter] So at midnight, the NFL's owners locked out their players.

The Players' Union
dissolved itself,

which allowed ten players,
led by star quarterback,
Tom Brady,

to file an antitrust
lawsuit against the League.

Basically, the owners want
to the players to take

what amounts to an 18% pay cut.

This isn't a strike.

The players aren't striking
because they want more money.

This is a lock out.
The owners are threatening
to lock their employees

out of the building unless
they take a pay cut.

In 2011, the League ended up
taking out a quote unquote loan

from its broadcast partners of
about four billion dollars.

[news reporter]
The League violated its
agreement with the Union

in setting aside 4 billion
dollars for itself in
additional TV Revenue.

The NFL was effectively
stockpiling money
to prepare for a lockout.

And that would have been
prevented it from

losing money in the event
of the lockout,
which of course happened.

And a federal judge ruled
for the players,
saying that this was

a shady deal and that it would
have taken that money then

out of the pool of revenue
that would have been available
for player salaries

and all these other
different things.

So, definitely, like, the NFL is

very creative, let's just say,

in trying to find ways to

maximize and preserve revenue.

[Andrew]
The NFL's brand has been valued
at 24 billion dollars.

That's with the B.
Then we shouldn't be surprised

that they're managing that
professionally and with a--

in a sophisticated way,
in a well resourced way.
We may think of

some of the things that firms
do as sort of manipulate.

Or maybe tricky.
From the point of view
of the brand owner,

what they're doing is called
public relations.

Look on the internet. You'll see
a single phrase appearing

time and again,
which characterizes the lockout

as a dispute between
quote billionaires
and millionaires.

And why the hell are
millionaires fighting
against billionaires

going to cost hardworking
Americans their money
and their favorite pastime?

There's a real class divide
between the way players
are paid.

There are players who make
multimillion-dollar contracts.

You could also be somebody,
you know, who's the 51st,
52nd, 53rd guy on the roster,

you could be
on the practice squad.

Uh, your money is not going
to be guaranteed in those
situations.

You may be making League minimum
which is, you know, a couple
hundred thousand dollars.

[Andrew] They're-- they're
really not millionaires versus
billionaires.

When we're given a--
we call this a heuristic

in consumer psychology,
when we're given a--
this little mental shortcut.

It's then becomes quite easy
to process what's going on,

when it's really a more complex,
more nuanced situation.

And this can be quite
an effective way

of directing a public opinion.

We want to know that
they are considering

the ethical implications

of the sophisticated
tactics that they employ.

We want to know that they're--
that they're not cheating.

[gentle piano music]

[Michael]
Until Deflategate,
the sanctity of the footballs

sure didn't seem like
a priority for the NFL.

No one ever gauged
a football during a game.

During halftime.
No one ever gauged
the footballs after a game.

It's not the nuclear briefcase.

Do you know where the-- the 12.5

to 13.5 range PSI comes from?

The back of the box that
Wilson footballs are sold in.

That's how the League
came up with this.

[light dramatic piano music]

[John] So, I'm a big
football fan, but I am
a Philadelphia Eagles fan.

I don't really like
the Patriots even though
I live in the Boston area,

and so I got interested in this
story because I thought it would
be a really

fascinating story
for a measurement
and instrumentation class.

I'm always looking for
real world examples

that will sort of make science
interesting and come alive
to students.

What I wanted to do was to try
to talk about this sort of

Deflategate controversy,
but go back to the data.

There were all these
reports about the, um,
alleged ball deflation

and word was leaked about,
you know, sort of

very large amounts
of pressure reduction,

but the NFL didn't
actually release the real data.

I was anxiously waiting
to see the real numbers.

I was like, "Why can't
the NFL release the data?
I want the data.

I want to be able to test
the data against the predictions
from the science

to know what's going on."

[Chris]
So the three footballs have been
in the environmental chamber for

an hour and 45 minutes, which is
about the amount of time that
the balls were out

on the playing field before they
came back into the locker room.

So they've been soaking
it 8.9 degrees Celsius,

which is about 48 degrees
Fahrenheit for that time.

We're now going to test them
again with our-- with our
calibrated

high accurate pressure sensor.

We're going to see
what the pressure is now.

This was one of the footballs
that was originally
at 12 and half PSI.

You see, it's now reading 11.44.

This is another one
that was at 12 and a half PSI.

Which is now reading
at about 11.34.

And finally... this was the ball
that was at 13 PSI.

And it's now
reading about 11.96.

All the footballs
have lost pressure,

uh, by approximately one PSI,
which is exactly

what the Patriots readings
were when they were measured
at halftime.

I read the report and I have
tremendous respect for
Exponent and it's sort of

amazing team of scientists,
its facilities.

And so I, um-- you know,
the-- the first sort of
temptation was to just

fully embrace their
conclusions in the report,

but then I decided to do
their calculations myself

and to dig into data myself
a little bit.

When they measured
the Patriots' ball on

the sidelines
with one of the gauges.

Guess what they measured?

we can look up--
they measured 11.3.

Okay? Now, instead of
thinking, ideal gas law,

they thought cheating,
and everything went
downhill from there.

The ideal gas law
prediction is 11.32 PSI.

So, at that instant, if they had
known the ideal gas law,
they would have known,

"Oh, this is perfectly
explained by science."

Instead, they said,
"Oh, it must be cheating."

The balls were inflated before
the game in a locker room
that's agreed to be

about 71 degrees Fahrenheit
to 12 and half PSI using one
of these two gauges.

All right. And the gauges
differ by 0.3 PSI.

Now, that might seem like
a lot, but it's actually
a one percent difference

in the air in the football to
explain a 0.3. PSI difference.

What most people don't realize,
the NFL had no idea
that this occurred.

And it's been occurring
for decades in NFL games.

It's that when there is cold
weather, the balls lose
pressure, naturally,

the-- the ratio of pressure
to temperature is constant.

Now, the trick is you have to
use absolute temperature
and absolute pressure units.

And for that,
we take the Fahrenheit
measurement and we add 460.

So, we take 71 degrees
Fahrenheit, plus 460,

gives us 531 degrees R,
degrees ranking.

The temperature
on the field, 48 degrees.

We add 460, you get 508 R.

If we take 508, the ranking
temperature in the field,

divide it by 531, the ranking
temperature in the locker room,

that ratio, you can get out
your calculator,
508 divided by 531...

it's about, if memory
serves me, about 95.7%.

0.957. What that means is that

the temperature fell by 4.3%.

So if the temperature fell
by 4.3%, and the temperature

and the pressure
have a constant ratio,

that means the pressure
has to fall 4.3%.

However, we have to
use absolute pressure.

So the 12 and a half PSI.

We add 14.7 to get 27.2.

We multiply that by 0.953,
the ratio and the ranking scale
of the two temperatures,

and we get a new predicted
pressure, which I believe is
26.02 PSI...

absolute. We subtract back off
the atmospheric pressure.

I'm using 14.7.
I think it was like 14.66

PSI, atmospheric pressure
at Norwood airport,
which is the closest

weather station I could find.

And you wind up,
you take the 26.02,

subtract off the 14.07,
you get 11.32 PSI.

So the Gay Lussac's law predicts

the ball pressure should
have been 11.32 PSI.

Compare those measurements
with the--

compare the measurements with
that prediction, and if they're
close, then physical laws

explain it, and if they're
not close, maybe something
else happened.

The average of all
the numbers from one gauge,

the average from the numbers
in the other gauge,

we get 11.11, 11.49.

Let's take the average
of those two numbers.

If we take the average of
all 22 measurements,
we get 11.30 PSI.

So summary, Patriots'
balls match the ideal gas
law prediction.

The agreement is well within
the measurement accuracy of the
gauges and the other unknowns.

There are a lot
of unknowns here.

It doesn't surprise me at all
that the referees who

had very little notice that they
had to do this procedure,

that they switched gauges
inadvertently

between the Colts'
and the Pats' balls.

That the third reading
of the Colts' balls

is wrong. So somehow they either

swapped the gauges back
and forth, or the person wrote

the wrong numbers in the wrong
columns or they might have
misheard a number.

[unintelligible] ...They bring
in 12 balls normally, and those
are classified as game balls.

We have the pressure them,
make sure they're between

League regulations as
12 and 13 and a half pounds.

12 and a half. Close enough.

-[air pressure]
-Whoa.

[John]
So this is a video
from something

called the Monday
Morning Quarterback website
for Sports Illustrated,

just showing how
they prepare the balls.

Did they write anything down?

Did they write down any numbers?

Did they take the temperature?

Did they have any sort
of experimental procedure?

Did they just say,
"12 and a half? Close enough."

Okay? With a sensor that
sort of costs 15 bucks
and is plus or minus

0.2 PSI accuracy. All right?

In any measurement problem,
there's a notion of
the margin of error,

it's how accurately
do you know something?

And so, in this problem,
we have so many different
sources of error.

We have the uncertainty
in the initial pressure.

We don't know the temperature
which it was when he took that
initial measurement.

We don't know, uh, the effect
of the balls being wet.

The cold, wet water
from the ground

would have two effects on
the balls. And so people
have done experiments

with at Carnegie Mellon where
if you make the leather wet,

it expands and the volume
increases. So my-- the
Gay Lussac's law assumes

the volume's fixed,
but if the volume increases,
the pressure also drop.

so there could be a three
percent drop in pressure

just due to the some
of the balls being wet.

There are many sources of error,
and to me the margin of error...

taking all these different
sources of error,

is much greater than
the actual alleged increment.

You know, if I had to stake my
reputation in my career on it...

the Patriots' balls match
the ideal gas law prediction.

If you look at their data,
it's accurate and it shows
that the--

what we're going to show
today in this experiment,
that the pressure drops

when you drop the-- the
temperature by as much as
we've seen on that game day.

It's all the other assumptions
they make and other things that

kind of skew the results
for them.

So what I did is I went
back to the historical

temperatures of NFL games,

and I made some assumptions,
which you know,
I'll be very clear about.

Like, if we assume the footballs
were inflated in a heated
locker room.

And then they went to
a cold playing field and--

or whatever the playing field
temperature was and had time
to equilibrate...

For what fraction of NFL games,
where the ball's been out

of this 12 and a half
to three and a half--

12 and a half
to 13 and a half PSI range,

and it's a huge fraction
of the games.

Game temperature...

um, versus the date of the game,

and so I-- starting out,
it's going kind of slow.
1960-'61.

And I have it
logarithmically getting
faster each year.

And so you can see how,
like, I build the graph...

of all the game time
predicted temperatures.
So, over 10,000 games.

I took out any game in a dome
stadium, whether the dome is
open or not.

And then what I did
is I predicted, okay, um,
if we started at 13 PSI

in the middle of the range,
what would the predicted
on-field pressure be?

And obviously,
for the colder weather games,
as we get later in the year,

we predict lots and lots
of games that are well
outside the range.

It's not just that
the numbers are ambiguous

or there might be some
questions about the report...

the numbers prove innocence.

The numbers prove innocence.

[Robert] Some of the issues
that I'm focused on were
the early issues of

what is a game.
What is a sport, cheating,

what constitutes cheating,
which would

get us right into
Deflategate because...

my perspective on Deflategate
is essentially this,

that someone cheated...

but it wasn't
the Patriots or Tom Brady,

it was the NFL,
that the cheating label

has been placed
on the wrong party.

[Andrew]
This is the idea that when

you learn a piece of
new information

and it comes with
a discounting Q,

so this would sound something
like, 11 of 12 footballs
used in the AFC

Championship Game, were
under-inflated by two PSI each,

uh, according to League sources.

So when I say, according to
League sources, that means,
"Hey, this is early,

there's more information
to come. So that-- that
functions as a discounting Q.

Now, here's the problem
with that, those two pieces
of information decay

at different rates,
that is, they are forgotten
at different rates.

They'll remember that
Chris Mortensen of ESPN said
11 of 12 footballs

were under-inflated by two PSI
and they'll forget
the discounting Q.

[Daniel]
One of the very first
things that I did

is I requested of the League

and of the League's
investigators

that we be provided with
the actual PSI information.

That request was refused.

when they finally made the
information or offered to make

the information about the actual
PSI numbers available...

they did so on the condition

that I would have to
agree that I would not share

that information with anyone,

which meant that the false
information ended up being

out in the public
for over a hundred days...

never corrected by the League.

And when the Wells report
is finally issued...

although the accurate
information is there...

it's largely buried in a story

that had much more to do
with interpretation of texts

than it had to do
with the science.

The effect we end up with is
that viewers remember

what turns out to be
incorrect information.

Not only was
misinformation leaked...

but the Patriots
the very next day

got an official letter
from the League.

And the official letter from
the League was also wrong

in terms of what
the Patriots were advised

the PSI of the footballs had
measured. That letter from
a League official,

said one of the balls
in fact had measured
as low as 10.1 PSI.

Well, that turned out
to be false, that same letter
said that none of

the Colts' balls that were
measured at halftime,

and that letter didn't disclose
it, only four were measured...

but the letter asserted, none of
the Colts' balls measured below
regulation.

That also was incorrect.

So, not only was the leaked
information wrong

about the Patriots' footballs,

but both the leaked
information and the official
letter from the League

was wrong about
the Colts' balls.

And unfortunately, what happens
with misinformation

when it is not
corrected, is it takes
on a life of its own.

So, people developed
across the country

this view that there must
really be something wrong

that happened here, because,
look, the Patriots' balls were

significantly below regulation

and all of the Colts' balls
were over-regulation.

Outside of New England
when people hear,

"Wow, those footballs
are more than two pounds
under underweight.

They must have been doing
something to those footballs."

You have to take a look at, to
what degree of cheating is it?

And we still see people
talk about it as if it's true,
when in fact it isn't.

[Andrew] Layer on top of that,

the idea of
the confirmation bias.

While we may think that we are

sort of in an unbiased way,
weighing all the evidence,

there are processes going on
in the background,

or under the surface,
that we're not aware of

that are leading us
to a particular conclusion.

There's an element to this
of confirmation bias.

Where people are going to
believe the thing that
they want to believe.

People tend to process

new information through the lens
of their existing attitudes.

And people tend to give more

attention to information
that confirms

their existing attitudes,
and they tend to either ignore

or discount or distort
information that disconfirms

what they already believe.
Now, this is the reason that

liberals tend to watch
MSNBC and conservatives
tend to watch Fox News,

because if you're
a conservative and you see
a conservative treatment

of the issues of the day,
that confirms

your existing worldview.
Same is true for liberals.

And it's just a much more
pleasurable experience to
encounter such information.

It's really challenging
to encounter information

that's-- disconfirms our
existing view of the world.

The fact that the leak contained
incorrect information...

in the fact that
it's a false leak designed,

it appears, to make
the Patriots look guilty,

would make Tom Brady conclude
that if he turns over his phone,

information on that phone
could be leaked in ways that
make him look guilty as well.

Whatever information
comes out first

is going to sort of
create a baseline

set of attitudes about
a particular incident,

and then all subsequent
information that comes out
after that

is going to be, in general,
is going to be processed
through the lens of

the additives that
were established by
the initial information.

In the press conference
immediately following,

Belichick essentially said,
"I can't explain it."

what was interesting about that
among other things is

he never once raises
the possibility... that
the reason he can't explain it

is because it isn't true.

In other words.
He accepts, as given, the
figures as leaked by the NFL,

which shows a remarkable trust,
and Brady's the same way.

Nobody says at that point,
those figures have to be wrong.

Nobody says it,
everyone accepts that.

[George]
If you're going to cover
the League and this is not just

a PSA, but this is
just 101, right?

Your skepticism now with how you
engage the League office...

on facts and...

information has to be
at an all-time high.

Certainly one thing that we
know from the political realm is

if you say something
and try to control the story

and you say it often enough...

people actually start
to think that's the truth.

Even if it's not, even if it's
not even close to the truth.

Mark Twain said, "It's easier
to lie to people than it is
to convince them

that they have been lied to.

I first started
getting turned around

when I read the Patriots'
response.

Ah, let's see what--
let's see what the Patriots

have the nerve
to try to defend themselves.

Come on, you're caught,
just admit it.

And I start reading
the Patriots' response,

which was drafted
by Daniel Goldberg,

who was the Patriots' lawyer.

And he starts pointing out
something, some things
that are very troubling.

And that don't make sense.

You know, I had this image
of the guy sneaking the balls.

He points out, here's this
big guy with two sacks of
footballs over his shoulder,

the ball locker room attendant,
walks out within full view
of everybody.

Nobody stops him.

Yes, he goes into
a bathroom for 100 seconds,

but the bathroom is on
the way to the field.

And he's not allowed to leave
the field for the whole
first half.

[Jim] With playoff football,

I mean, there's a lot more
people that are in the,

uh, the official's area.

Um, there's a lot more
intensity, a lot more hype
for playoff football.

Just a lot more people
from the League office are down
there, security, etc..

So, I mean, it's typical playoff
football that, uh, a lot of
people in the locker room.

If it was so unusual
for him to do it,

carry the two bags of
balls over his shoulders.

How come he passed by dozens
of officials and no one
stopped him?

How come he did it again going
back in after halftime
and nobody stopped him?

A, B. 100 seconds,
the rush, why?

The NFL game had
gone into overtime, the NFL--

NFC Championship game,
which everyone was watching
on TV had gone into overtime.

He had more than--
he had plenty of time,
why rush it in 100 seconds?

Because if you over deflate
a ball, it gets too soft,

can you imagine
if he had stopped with,

they issued false figures,
they withheld them for us
for eight weeks,

they only gave them to us
on condition that
we not release them

until they release
the Wells report.

And then goes through the
science that they went through.

How science fully explains:

A, the drop in pressure
of the Patriots' balls.

And, B, the greater drop in
pressure of the Patriots' balls

as against the Colts' balls,
and stop there.

The press would have gone wild.

And then the sentiment would
have built and built and built

of the innocence getting
screwed by the League.

Instead, he talked about the
deflator of the interpretation,

which may even be accurate,
but it wasn't plausible.

You know, the ancient sophists
knew that we value the plausible
more than the true.

So it might have been true,
but it wasn't plausible.

And of course it was the subject
of mirth and merriment

and it sucked
all the attention from
the media, right to that,

became this butt of jokes.
And late-night TV,
that became the headline,

and everyone forgot
the attack on the science.

♪ To me those balls
are perfect ♪

♪ I can only speak for myself

♪ I don't want anyone touching
the balls, rubbing the balls ♪

♪ To me those balls
are perfect ♪

A guy named Tommy told me
that one of the balls
had a genie in it.

I just take a little bit of
air out of most of them.

Deflated those balls.
Don't believe me go.

I love you, Touchdown Tommy.

It was me.

As brilliant as his counter was,

Dan Goldberg's,
and it was, in my view,

it converted me, but it went on
to characterize the texts,

especially the infamous McNally
calling himself the deflator.

[Jerry]
Couple things about
the deflator text: one,

it was in May of 2014. In the
middle of the lowest part of the

off-season, one idiot sends
a text to some other idiot
calling himself the deflator,

somehow that proves
that Tom Brady conspired

with these guys to take
air out of a football
the following January?

There was no other deflator
text within the--

Right. So, you got May, 2014.

The game is in January, 2015.

There are no deflator text
in the interim,
you know, part of the reason why

we find the deflator text
so meaningful...

is that the name of this
controversy is Deflategate.

Right. It seems like a big deal,

because it's the same word.

Countering that,
counterbalancing that,
in my view...

was the text
that never happened.

That was, if you remember
after the Jets game,

Brady complained about
the footballs,

that they felt like bricks.

And then the next morning...

[Robert] But-- Jastremski,
the equipment manager,
assistant equipment manager

confirms it,
that Brady was right.

Because he measured
the PSI in the footballs

and they were measuring at 16,

which is way
above the legal maximum.

And what's interesting
is in their exchange.

He says, "The refs fucked us."

What he doesn't say
is what's so revealing.

He doesn't say, "Hey, McNally,
buddy boy, do your job."

If there was
an ongoing scheme...

I can't imagine why Jastremski
wouldn't have said to McNally,

"Not the refs fucked us,
but you fucked up."

That's the most persuasive text
in my view. It's a non text.

They've had this sort of series
of public relations

crises in terms of
the domestic violence problem,

that Adrian Peterson video,
you know, the New Orleans Saints
with the Bountygate, that

concussions and
long-term health impacts of
repeated concussions' issue.

[news reporter 1]
The NFL attempted to
derail a concussion

study, according to
a Congressional Report.

[news reporter 2]
A scathing Congressional
Report issued today,

says the NFL improperly
sought to influence

a major Government
research study into the link

between football
and brain disease.

The League did not carry out
its commitment to respect
the science

and prioritize
health and safety.

[George]
DeMaurice Smith was
elected Executive Director

of the NFLPA in 2009.

One of the first...

things that we started
to recognize

and he really started
to realize then, was this

shady science around
the issue of concussions.

The NFL has been
accused of not turning over

all relevant information
related to concussions.

And of course there was
the scientific finding of CTE
as a neurological condition.

And for many it started
to draw an eerie parallel

to another industry,
the tobacco industry.

[Robert]
This may be the whole
explanation for Deflategate.

I'd sometimes believe that
Deflategate was something that

the NFL was delighted about,
because it diverted attention

from their existential threat,
which is CTE,

which is the brain damage.

The evidence for which is now
overwhelming and irrefutable.

It faces an existential
crisis right now.

Recent research

has revealed beyond any doubt,

of course, that it causes
brain damage and has in--

in more than 110 autopsies.

Now, these weren't randomly
selected. They were of play--

former players who had
shown signs of dementia.

Some of whom had
committed suicide, etc.

And now the most recent research
is showing not only college
football players

and high school football
players, but Pop Warner League,
youth football players.

We had some concerns about,
in particular, the way that
they were engaged

with one. Dr. Bennet Omalu,
for example,

whose studies were
not just ignored,

but they were actively
suppressed.

By a group of quote-unquote
doctors at the League office

who were not interested
in the truth.

At war with one of the biggest
corporations in the world.

Bennet!

[dramatic music]

There was a rheumatologist
named Elliot Pellman,

who was the team doctor for
the Jets for many years,

who was placed on
the NFL's concussion board,

someone who didn't have
any experience in head trauma,

but had a lot of experience
in protecting

teams and in protecting
the League.

You maybe know that if a player

gets hit in the head, he's got
to go through the protocols.

Well, we advocated for that.

[Michael]
It eventually led to

a series of lawsuits
against the NFL

brought by retired players.

The Union agreed to

having players arbitrate
their health plans

before they can go to court.

And that ends up being
a major reason

why the players
accepted a settlement
in the concussion litigation.

That a lot of people
would say isn't enough,
because had they gone

to court, had they rejected the
settlement and gone to court,

there's a really good chance
they would have lost.

We've had some tough cases
over the last few years

to defend publicly.

Dog-fighting, gambling, uh,
issues of bullying,

drug abuse,
spousal abuse, child abuse.

I mean, a lot of the players
have been in a lot of hot water.

Collective bargaining
is effective

because both
parties understand...

what the agreement says.

The language is jointly

worked on, it's jointly agreed
upon and it's fully transparent.

The NFL has been criticized
for being inconsistent

about how it treats
and punishes players

that have been
accused of committing some
type of domestic violence act.

And this traces back
to various points,

but one of them would be
the Ray Rice controversy.

In 2014, Ray Rice was caught

on film inside an elevator

in Atlantic City punching
his then-girlfriend,

Janay Palmer, in the face.

She was knocked out
and then he dragged

her body, unconscious body
out of the elevator.

And the first reaction
that you have when you see

the video play out is,
"This is shocking."

The facts of what had happened

had already been spelled out in
a police report that came out in

April of that year,
but it wasn't until September

that the video was released.

And when the video was
released, there was outrage.

How is it that this player
could knock out a woman

and get two games
as a suspension.

Now, two games was the usual
kind of suspension for this.

But to see it was a completely
different thing for people.

There were sponsors that
threatened to pull money.

I mean, Budweiser and Pepsi
came out

and issued public statements
saying that

the NFL needs to get--
get its house in order.

You have a beer company coming
out and saying that

the NFL needs to get its house
in order on this issue.

And so, the NFL had to listen,
because here's this whole
pool of revenue

that's threatening to go away
if they can't address
this issue.

Our Union is there
to make sure that the process

of the CBA
is adhered to properly,

that they have their
full set of rights.

Um, not for the end result
of trying to get their
fine reduced,

but to make sure that they've
had their fair due process

from the time they get
the disciplinary letter,

to the time that that
incident gets adjudicated.

Roger Goodell
handled it appropriately,

because he turned
a two-game suspension
into an indefinite suspension.

So, he basically double
punished Ray Rice.

The NFL sort of ignored
what the collective bargaining

agreement had said about
how to manage these cases.

Again, not focusing
on the conduct,

but focusing on the precedent
and the contract that we have
with the leak.

So, we step in,
we file a grievance on
the player's behalf.

We challenge, um,
the indefinite suspension

and the second, um,
wave of discipline

that the League office
imposed on Ray.

Ray Rice was guilty
of domestic violence.

Everyone knows it,
a video shows it, he went
through the legal system.

And yet, he still won
his appeal with the NFL.

and that's because the NFL
made a procedural mistake.

It punished him twice
for the same thing.

And you can't do that
in the NFL.

There's a rule under Article 46

that forbids double punishment.

We won that case
because the NFL acted
unilaterally and ignored,

um, the binding principles,

um, we have in our collective
bargaining agreement.

Now, why do you think Goodell
dragged this out so much?

Roger Goodell's kind of
in a tough situation

with some of the suspensions
he made in the past.

So, basically you just
suspend the most hated player.

You get some more fan support,
some ownership support.

Context matters. This follows...

Goodell losing
the Ray Rice case,

this follows Goodell being
rejected, repudiated

by his old boss, Paul Tagliabue,

who ruled that the suspensions
again Saints players, including
Jonathan Vilma,

in the Bountygate controversy,
were not appropriate.

So, I think at this point
Goodell thought,
"I need to really show

that I'm in control,
that I'm able to execute
a function of my job.

And one of those functions
is player discipline.

So I think Goodell
probably viewed this
as an opportunity to say,

"I'm going to tell the world.
I'm actually in charge."

Roger Goodell is a guy
who has lied to the world

about wife-beaters. He's lied
to the world about concussions,

and yet somehow he comes up with
this stupid Deflategate thing

that doesn't add up,
and the whole world goes,

"Well, he's got to be telling
the truth this time."

You know, they're a motivated
actor managing a brand worth
billions of dollars.

They know attentional
space is finite.

There's been a lot of
negative information,

a lot of negative attention,

you know, scapegoating
is a strategy

as old as human history, right?

If you can, sort of,
direct that negative attention
at a particular individual,

uh, that's-- that can often be
a way to take it off of
the larger organization

or the brand.

Um, so, I think that
holds some sway.

Okay, and why do you think
Goodell dragged
the issue out so much?

I think to deface the Patriots.

I think they've been
such a, um, a strong

franchise for so long,
and I think other owners
and other teams are jealous.

This business of leveling the
playing field in the NFL has
been pretty effective

for the most part. Teams are
able to build fast and, you
know, when they get successful

it's hard to stay on top.
And the Patriots have been
the outlier.

The Patriots' consistent
victories over the 15 years
were very bad for business.

They obscured two larger
markets, New York and Miami.

They essentially--
Brady's continuous stardom...

eclipsed otherwise rising stars.

Belichick created this template
for sustained success.

And it's not about spending
a ton of money on a few
superstars.

It's about building this deep
middle class on the team.

Part of the reason
he's been able to maintain that

is because Brady hasn't
held them financially
over a barrel.

Why do you think Goodell
dragged the issue out so much?

Um, to tell you the truth,
I think it was

a lot to do with
the previous scandal in, um,

how they were spying
in the Super Bowl. And he kind
of wanted to send a message

with this to all the other
owners, that the Patriots,

if they get caught
with anything else...

then he's really gonna
throw the hammer down on them.
And I think he did.

Maybe one interpretation
of Deflategate is that
the whole thing

may be understood
as a makeup call.

There were a couple of really
powerful long-form pieces.

Most notably ESPN,
the Magazine's piece

with Don Van Natta
and Seth Wickersham.

ESPN is now reporting
that the scandal
and the drama that ensued

was deeply intertwined
with Spygate.

You asked at the-- at the
outset, "Well, what motivated--
what got this started?"

And I think, after the game
itself, certain League
officials were already

saying to the Patriots,

"Oh, you're in trouble,
you've been cheating."

Then they hire investigators
and they pay millions
of dollars to them.

There's almost becomes a certain
inevitability that they better
find something went on

that was amiss here. Otherwise,
they're going to look foolish.

"What does this have to do with
football?" That's an obvious

and awful question.

First, you know,
I live outside of Baltimore.

I have lots of friends
in New England that are
die hard Patriots fans.

And my brother-in-law is
a die-hard Patriots fan,
and it drives me insane.

All right? I'm a casual observer
of NFL football

and I despise the Patriots,

and I really don't watch
a lot of football, but, boy,
I just can't stand them.

But I'll tell you,
when the whole scandal came out,

my initial response was,
"Oh, great. They finally
caught them cheating."

And then I see that the report
is authored by Exponent.

And my conclusion,
immediately, without ever
having read it was,

if they had to go to Exponent.
They must really not have
a whole lot of evidence.

As somebody that-- that has
spent the better part of
two decades, um, addressing...

science for hire,
and coming across the same
organizations over and over...

I found it extremely interesting

that the NFL chose Exponent,
uh, to write the report

and that they didn't go to one
of the academics that then
subsequently lined up

to criticize
the Exponent report.

what it provides us with
is an excellent opportunity

for anybody that
likes football, right?

To have a little peek under
the covers as to the incredibly
vast and wide

reaching influence of science
for hire in our society.

I mean, this isn't just
scientists disputing the link

between chromium 6 pollution
in Hinkley, California,

which was the subject of
the Erin Brockovich movie,
which is actually based

on a real lawsuit, right?

It's not just about people
who are exposed
to asbestos decades ago.

Anybody who likes nachos and
beer and likes to watch the NFL,

can look at this and say this is
a railroad job, you know,
this isn't science.

And this is affecting now,
you know, with all apologies to
baseball, our national pastime.

So whether you like
the Patriots and you're pissed
off that Brady had to sit

out a bunch of games, or whether
you hate them and you thought,

"Well, they're going to get
theirs now." Your life has now
been affected by this,

in a way that's concrete.

[Jim]
Houston has a lot of oil
refineries and chemical plants,

if you've ever been there.
It's a huge industrial complex.

So when I was there in the '90s,
I got really interested in this

'cause I felt that a lot of
these workers were sort of
being, you know, forgotten.

They would put in 20, 30
years at some oil refinery

or some petrochemical plant
and then they'd get leukemia

or they'd get some other
cancer that was known

to be caused by chemical--
chemical exposure,
and they would die at 55

Or die at 60, you know,
having been loyal to their
company for all those decades.

And nobody seemed to really,
you know, care about
these people.

So, that's when I started
to get interested in this.

We've won probably
three dozen awards

on my team since
I came back here in 2010.

And so just a sort of general
knowledge of how things worked

led me to a story about
how Ford Motor Company,

uh, which like a lot of--
which like all the major
car manufacturers

used asbestos brakes
for many, many years,

well into the--
I think '80s and '90s.

Unbeknownst to most of us
in our-- in our--
in our country,

there is an enormous industry.

I would refer to it
as product defense science.

The example most people are
familiar with is the toba--
the tobacco industry's efforts

to create doubt regarding
the nature and extent of
the dangers of cigarettes.

I believe that nicotine
is not addictive.

And I too believe that
nicotine is not addictive.

Company X makes
a certain product.

Let's say a chemical,
it's being sued.

It's being hit with a lot of
lawsuits from workers
or consumers or whatever.

Or, uh, its product
is being looked at
for stricter regulation

or even banning by the EPA

or the FDA or the consumer
product safety commission.

I need to have experts,
I need to have expert
witnesses in court.

I need to have expert
witnesses who can
give depositions

or testify before the EPA.

And it's sort of the--
in my opinion,
the reverse scientific method,

scientists following the
scientific method come up with

a hypothesis, they collect
all the data and they see
where the data leads.

Science for hire...

does the reverse of that.

There's a preordained conclusion
that they're hoping to get to,

they then assemble
the information in the way that

supports that conclusion
and figure out ways
to explain away the evidence

that doesn't support
the conclusion.

In doing that,
they can follow...

scientific methods
throughout the process

and yet guarantee a result
that favors the patron.

I'm going to go to Exponent.
I'm going to go to Chem Risk.

I'm going to go to Gradient
because, frankly, I know
what I'm going to get.

There aren't going
to be any surprises.

You know, I'm not going to have

a scientist come back to me
six months later and say,

"Oh, I'm sorry, but your product
really does cause cancer."

But this is happening
not just with tobacco,
it's happening with asbestos,

with pesticides, with lead,
with petroleum products,

with petroleum additives,
with plastics,

you name it. If there are
concerns about health hazards,

there are scientists who are
being hired by the industries,
creating or using

those health hazards,
that have been hired
to minimize those dangers.

And-- and that's what I would
refer to as science for hire.

If you're the power industry
and people are concerned about
particulate emissions

from smokestacks,
from power plants causing asthma

or respiratory problems
downwind of the power plants.

You can go and you can find
papers that have been written by

scientists hired by the power
industry to dispute those
links, right.

If the question is pesticides
and Parkinson's disease,

you can go and you can find
scientists that have been hired

to write papers that either
minimize the risks

or that say the existing
science is, for one reason
or the other, flawed.

I'm an asbestos lawyer.

But when I see
the same names popping up

on papers about arsenic
and pesticides and lead

and lead paint in toys
and chromium and all
of these other products.

And the papers seem to
uniformly come to the conclusion

that none of these things
are causing anybody to get sick,

or that there's not
sufficient scientific

evidence to show that
anybody is getting sick,

which sounds a lot like
the tobacco industry
talking to Congress.

You see a lot of smoke, and--
and generally, where there's
smoke, there's fire.

The NFL sort of has this kind
of blanket denial or minimizing

of, uh, the fact that there
may be this, you know, link.

And it sort of reminds me
of the tobacco companies

of pre-'90s when they kept
saying, "No, there's no link

between smoking
and damage to your health
or ill health effects."

I do believe that we have
embraced, uh, the research,

uh, the medical study of
this issue, as you point out.

You're talking about one study
and that's the NFL study.

You're not talking about
the independent studies

that have been conducted
by other researchers.

The whole aim, I think,
is to get this,

you know--
is to not only testify,

but the key seems
to be publishing,

getting-- getting a paper in
a peer-reviewed journal.

Peer review simply means that
when the paper is submitted

to one of these scientific
journals, the journal
sends it out

to other scientists who are
not authors on the paper.

They review the paper.
They'll make recommendations
to the journal,

that whether the journal
should accept the paper
for publication,

and if they do recommend
that it be published,

they will often make editorial
comments and say, "Well, this
part of the paper is weak

and needs more support"
or "Some proposition over here
doesn't make sense."

Peer-reviewed scientific papers

get extra weight in courtrooms,
because they've gone through
that process.

About a year ago,
one of my reporters
focused on two journals

that are known to publish a lot
of corporate funded studies.

One is called Critical
Reviews in Toxicology.

The other is called Regulatory
Toxicology and Pharmacology.

About half of all the articles
written by scientists with
the consulting firm, Gradient,

which is one of these firms
we've been talking about,

appeared in one
of those two journals.

So, it's just, there are certain
journals that are known

to publish this sort of science.
Until the '90s Exponent,

it was known as
Failure Analysis Associates,

but I think it was
only after, uh,

say, beginning of the late
'90s going up to the present,

that Exponent as we now know it,
really made its name

defending everybody from,
you know, Toyota in the sudden
acceleration cases,

to General Motors, to some
of the stuff we wrote about

asbestos litigation.
Pretty much, you name it,
they've been involved in.

Ford Motor Company was being
sued regularly and was
losing lawsuits

alleging that asbestos,
Ford had used in its brakes

uh, had made people sick with
a disease called mesothelioma,

which is a very deadly
and rare cancer.

There really is no other way to
get mesothelioma, except to be
exposed to asbestos.

Its-- there's just
a rock-solid length between

asbestos exposure
and mesothelioma.

[Jonathan]
One of the companies that we
come across on a regular basis,

and that was hired by
The Big Three automakers
in the early 2000s

to write a series
of papers about

asbestos in car parts, is this
company called Exponent.

[Jim]
40 million dollars later
and 15 years later,

we now have all
this science out there.

Much of which is published
in peer-reviewed journals,

that says, "Well, maybe--
maybe asbestos isn't

mas tightly linked to
mesothelioma as we thought.

So again, it's all about raising
doubt, raising questions.

Ford and its lawyers
can come into court

and they can cite
and attempt to rely upon
the work that was

done by the scientists
at Exponent and ChemRisk,
they hired.

[Jim]
Scientists with firms
like Exponent will tell you,

when you talk to them,
they're completely free
to publish their work

in Scientific journals,
they make the call.

What we found is that,
at least in some cases,

corporations or more likely
their lawyers,

have a strong influence
over what gets published
or doesn't get published.

It's the framing of
the question, really, that is

one of the signature moves
of doubt science.

So the scientists and the
lawyers can work together

to decide what question
they're going to answer.

Then very carefully keep
the question and the inquiry

to that narrow,
preordained result.

The balls had to be--
started at 12 and a half
for the Patriots,

and then they fell to 11.3.
The Colts started at 13
and they fell to 12.5.

And it's this difference, the
difference of the differences,

is the sort of the incriminating
thing against the Patriots.

How did this happen? The Pats'
balls match the prediction...

The Colts' balls
are the ones that don't.

Instead of asking why
the Pats' balls were too low,

the question is, why were
the Colts' balls too high?

[class chuckles]

Okay. You get it?

Manipulation of the control
group is, you know,
a classic example

of how you can manipulate data
without manipulating
the data, right?

You can manipulate
the conclusion of the paper

without manipulating
the data, because if you

compare the--
the study subjects in question,

to an inappropriate control, you
can either make a result appear

or make it disappear
depending on what's important.

That happened with
the asbestos industry,

uh, in the 1950s,
with respect to lung cancer

and asbestos exposure.
By choosing

an inappropriate control group,

the statistical increase in lung
cancer was able to be hidden.

They made some very
large assumptions,

uh, the biggest assumption
they made was that
the Colts' ball

acted as a control
for the experiment.

Um, and I think that's
completely, uh, inaccurate

or at least there's
no way to know that,
that's a large assumption.

The League had this, in my
opinion, convoluted analysis

where they said the Colts'
balls must be perfect.

Let's look at the difference
from the Colts' balls.

The Colts' balls measurement
times were unknown

and steered
by Paul Weiss to be assumed

earlier in the half time rather
than later, which kind of defies
common sense

if they were running
out of time, and that's why
they only did four footballs.

When we try and find out
information about the link
between the lawyers

and the scientists, in general,
the response from the companies
has been, "This is privileged.

It's work product information.

These were litigation
actions that were taken."

Now, none of the disclaimers
that I have ever seen
in any of these papers

say this was part of a
privileged work product between
the scientists and the lawyers.

But when we try and get those
communications, that's generally
the defense that happens.

Walt Anderson had two gauges.

He'd been bringing two gauges
with him to games
for a long time.

He knew from his own habits
which gauge he used

to gauge the footballs
before the game began.

And he told the world's
reporters which gauge that was.

That ended up being inconsistent
with the notion that there must
have been tampering with

the footballs.

And so, the Wells investigators

concluded,
"No, his memory isn't right.

He actually used
the other gauge."

Just use the gauge that
the referee remembers using.

Remember,
he only had two gauges.

He used one of those
two gauges 48 times.

He measured the balls 48 times.

The interview
notes would reveal it.

What happened to the interview
notes? They weren't turned over.

Why weren't they turned
over to the defense?

Well, they weren't
turned over to the defense.

The claim is,
because they were work products

and protected by
lawyer-client confidentiality.

But wait a minute...

those lawyers were
supposed to be acting

as outside investigators,
that's the way they were hired

as independent investigators,
until it comes time...

for the defense
to get the notes.

Then it's,
"No, they're our lawyers,
therefore shielded by--"

Well, which way do you want it?

They were told what
assumptions to make

about what happened
at halftime...

by the Paul Weiss Law Firm.

And that is why...

the notes of the interviews
that the Wells' investigators

made of their interviews
of the game officials
and League officials

who were present
at halftime become so vital.

The Wells report assumed
and Exponent assumed

that the sequence was
Patriots' balls measured

found below 12.5.

Colts' balls measured,
four of them,

found below 12.5 on one gauge

but above 12.5 on the other
gauge, and left alone.

Then, all the Patriots'
balls are re-inflated.

Those are only three events
that happened in half time.

There are four officials
involved, two measuring,

two observing and recording,
and they can't come to
a consensus

as to what are the three events,
what the order are
of the three events?

That is implausible
to the extreme.
That's one of the things

that the interview
notes would reveal.

They didn't have enough time to
measure all of the Colts' balls,

which to me says that they
measured them last,

so those balls
had more time to warm up.

So the Patriots' balls
were measured first,
while they were still warming up

and that pressure was still low,
and in their own analysis,
they show it only takes

a matter of minutes for those
balls to start warming up

and that pressure to start
changing. So, sure enough,

if you measure the Colts'
balls after you measure
all the Patriots' balls,

those are warmed up and their
pressure's going to increase.

And that easily explains
the difference in pressure

between the two balls
at the halftime.

[piano music]

-They withheld
the evidence consistently.
-[clock ticking]

[reporter]
So, in these two pictures,
as we look at them,

you're saying it was purposeful.

And on under one,
they start the needle
at the zero point.

And under the other,
they shift the ruler

so that they started
at the 0.2 inch.

So as to make the needle appear
longer to the untrained eye.

Not only do they shift
the ruler, not only did
they photograph it

at an angle which
diminishes the bend...

but they also withdrew
the camera, notice...

from a greater distance for
the longer gauge, thus
actually shrinking it.

So, they shifted the ruler,
they shrunk the gauge.

[reporter]
One was twice as big
as the other one.

-Yes, and more severely bent.
-[reporter] And more
severely bent.

So you're saying then
Walt Anderson,
the referee for the game,

should have been clearly
been able to remember
what gauge he was using.

Yes, should have and did.

The coverage of Deflategate

and Exponent's involvement
in the Deflategate scandal

would dwarf
the combined coverage

of doubt science in our
society over the last 15 years.

What's going on here
is not sound science.

It just sounds like science.

I think one of the--
the sort of scary things

for me having done
a number of stories

about this topic is that people
and-- and even smart people,

even people who read a lot
and are just to sort of
attuned to things,

I don't think realize how much
this corporate funded science
has sort of

infiltrated our society.

[Jonathan]
The funding for
government-funded research,

whether that's done
at NIOSH or the EPA
or whether it's done by

independent scientists at--
at universities and scientific
organizations,

is absolutely critical
in our society.

We reported last year that the
National Institutes of Health's
budget for research grants

had fallen 14% from its peak

in 2004, uh, until 2016.

So as government funded
science diminishes,

that opens the door for
more corporate funded science.

When that funding goes away,
all that's left are the doubt
scientists, right?

And there is no more debate,
now all we get will be

the industry-sponsored
perspective on things.

And that's incredibly
dangerous and incredibly
concerning to me, right?

But that's what's going on now,
as the talk of defunding the EPA

or eliminating the EPA,
of defunding OSHA,

of not allowing scientists
to take positions,

government scientists to take
positions until they've been
vetted by politicians.

My concern is that we'll get
desensitized as a society

to, uh, you know,
fake news or fake science,

and just sort of accept
that that's part of life,

uh, because it's not,
and it's putting all
of our lives in danger.

Cheating was of great concern
to the ancient Greeks
in the Olympics.

Everybody had to swear an oath
not to cheat before the games.

And when I say everybody, that
included not only the athletes,
but also the judges.

And those who administered
the Olympics, they had to swear
an oath to Zeus not to cheat.

The Patriots and Tom Brady
were punished,

their controversy took
two different paths.

For Tom Brady, the path was,
he's a member of the Union.

And the Union, the National
Football League Players
Association has negotiated

a collective bargaining
agreement. The key provision
in it, Article 46,

is the provision that authorizes
Tom Brady to file an appeal.

The Patriots, in contrast,
have no such protection.

The NFL system for players
being able to challenge

punishments by
the Commissioner is such that

the appeal goes to
the Commissioner himself.

[news reporter]
Commissioner Roger Goodell can either hear the appeal himself,

or appoint an arbitrator
to hear it.

Now, in law, we don't do that.
We don't say the trial judge

says one thing, but you
can appeal back to the trial.

No, you want-- you literally
want anyone but that person

to hear the app--
anyone's better than the person
who originally punished you.

Under Article 46, the appeal
goes to Roger Goodell,

but Goodell has a choice,
he can delegate that he--

that role as
the hearing officer,
and he's done it before.

he did it with Ray Rice.
He did it with Adrian Peterson.

He did it with Ezekiel Elliott
after Deflategate.

Yet, with Tom Brady,
he chose not to do that.

He chose to serve
as the hearing officer,

even though NFL referees are
implicated in this controversy.

Those referees work for
Roger Goodell, even though

there was a false leak
from the League office.

It's the fundamental
principle of justice.

You cannot decide your own case.

Here, the Commissioner
had decided the penalty

and now he was sitting
as the Appellate Judge.

In Bountygate,
it was also wrong and he was
pressured out of doing it.

But here he did it.
Now, again, I said
the blame should be spread.

They agreed to it.

They being
the Players' Association.

He shouldn't have allowed that.
That's outrageous.

What we have said
from the beginning is,

we should have a collectively
bargained process.

Whereby we conduct
investigations, the Commissioner
issues discipline,

it's reviewed by a neutral
arbitrator, and we're done.

-[host] Right.
-I mean, look--

[host] But everybody
argues though, De, always,

and you know I have your back,
everyone always says, "Well,
the players gave that up."

Article 46, the player
conduct policy impacts

probably about
one percent of players.

Now, it just so happens that
some of these players are
big names.

Tom Brady, Adrian Peterson,
Ray Rice, Ezekiel Elliott,

but if you're the Union,
you want to focus

in negotiating
the collective bargaining
agreement with the NFL

on policies that are going
to affect all players,

policies like
health care, pensions...

minimum salaries
affect many players.

Things like that
are actually more
meaningful to NFL players.

So in a sense,
the Union's logic...

is actually sensible,
but I think,

by ignoring this
particular policy,

it's left players vulnerable.
And it just so happens

that some of these players
are big names.

We know that we're not
walking into a fair set-up.

We knew it, we knew, because
we had the documents, we knew.

You are not walking
into a fair hearing.

This is designed to get you.

And I would have said that,
I would have loved
to have said that,

I would have loved to
have been more aggressive.

That, I think is a great
illustration of how much

Tom believed that Roger was
going to do the right thing.

Tom Brady
changed the dynamics of
the controversy by agreeing

to testify under oath

during the arbitration hearing
before Roger Goodell.

The significance of testifying
under oath, is that if somebody
knowingly lies

while testifying under oath,

they have committed
the crime of perjury.
It's a really serious thing.

So that just shows
how much Tom Brady is
putting himself on the line

to say, "I didn't do it."

So I think that certainly
lends credibility,

tremendous credibility
to what he said.

The Wells report concludes that,

the most that they concluded
about Tom Brady is that he was

probably, quote,
"generally aware"

of this violation of the rules,
supposed violation of
the rules

by these other folks. There's
simply no basis to say that

some "general awareness" of
somebody else's violation

should subject that person
to punishment.

So, in my view, the League was
looking for some additional
evidence of Tom's involvement

in this, to come out
of the hearing on appeal.

There was no such evidence.

So the question then that
the League faced, if you're
going to try to move

from being generally aware
to being involved...

what evidence can you rely on?

The only thing that they
could latch onto was that

Tom no longer had the cell phone

that the Wells investigators
indicated he would never have
to turn over.

According to them,
Tom Brady ordered the cell phone

that he had used for
the four months prior
to being called in

-by investigators.
He had ordered it destroyed.
-Wow.

And when it comes to
controlling the story,

then somewhat curiously,

immediately before
the Commissioner's decision
is announced,

there's a press release from
the League which emphasizes...

destruction of the phone.
And the reliance of the League.

Well, the destruction
of the phone must have
reflected his guilty mind.

There's no NFL rule that
requires a player to turn over
his personal phone.

It's not in any player contract.

It's not in the collective
bargaining agreement.

It's literally a rule
that doesn't exist.

The NFL can only argue
that a failure to turn over

the phone, is some type
of reflection of being
uncooperative.

I would say, I don't buy that.

Because if it was such an
important piece of information,
there should be a rule

authorizing the NFL to get it.
But it's important to stress
that Tom Brady

had no actual obligation
to turn over his phone.

I think if it was just about
deflating of footballs,
then it never would

have happened but, uh...

he hired lawyers
and he destroyed his phone.

In his order,
Roger Goodell noted that
Tom Brady destroyed his phone.

Notice the word, "destroyed."
That is a powerful word,

it suggests active,

it suggests a desire to

eliminate implicating evidence.

In law, when you
destroy evidence,

you're actually
committing a crime.

And it was clearly used
intentionally to portray
Tom Brady

as at fault and really
as having bad intentions.

Tom Brady is as big of a
celebrity in sports as there is.

Any piece of personal
information on his phone
is newsworthy.

Anything. Tom Brady knows
that if he turns over his phone,

then anything about his personal
life that's leaked will become
newsworthy.

He has to believe that there's
potential temptation to leak
that kind of information,

particularly when there
had already been leaks
involving the story.

[Robert]
The hearing before
the Commissioner,

ten hours.

During which, Kessler doesn't
lay a glove, really, on the,
uh, witnesses.

He doesn't-- when he's
got witnesses from Exponent
and when he cross-examines,

he doesn't really attack.
He lets them go into
technical... realms.

He never presses on the sequent.
Their goal was to restrict
the power

of the Commission.

Their goal was not to
establish the innocence
of the particular player.

That dropped out, they allowed
science to drop out.

They allowed the NFL
to draw an analogy between
the behavior of Tom Brady

and the 1919 Black Sox Scandal,

which fixed the World Series.

But to analogize Tom Brady

with fixing the World Series,
this fierce competitor.

And the NFLPA just let it pass.

And Brady was represented
by counsel, at least on paper.

We knew it was a kangaroo court.

I still think
he felt like, man to man,

I'm gonna tell the truth
and everything's gonna be fine.
Didn't turn out that way.

In the Wells report,
Ted Wells portrays Tom Brady

as almost a passive participant,

that it was more
probable than not that
he had general awareness

of a football deflation scheme
orchestrated by others.

And yet, after Tom Brady's
appeal with Roger Goodell,

Brady's role is transformed

into the architect,
the ringleader
of this deflation conspiracy.

And it wasn't clear
what evidence

changed Tom Brady's role.
There was no new evidence.

Roger Goodell introduced a new
allegation against Tom Brady.

And the allegation was that Tom
Brady didn't share his phone,

or to borrow Roger Goodell's
words, he destroyed his phone.

Because Brady was punished
without the phone being
an issue,

he never had a chance to
appeal the phone issue.

It came up on the appeal.

How can he appeal the appeal?
He can't.

There was absolutely no basis
to make that conclusion.

And Tom ended up turning over,
as part of his appeal,

turning over to the League
extensive records

that existed about...

who he was calling,
who he was texting, all of it.

In his order, Roger Goodell
made a very strange analogy.

He compared Tom Brady's alleged
role in Deflategate, to a player
using steroids.

The problem with this analogy
is, among other things,
with steroid...

punishments, it-- they must
follow a specific set of rules

that go to chain of custody,
that go to rights to an appeal,

that have been assented to
by The Players' Association.

With Deflategate,
none of these rules existed.

Tom is a good guy.
And he has faith in

the institutions
and the people around him and

I think he really
believed that, "No, if I go
and tell Roger the truth...

everything's going to be fine,
and it wasn't fine.

When the Commissioner
issued his decision

on appeal, simultaneously
with that, the League filed

a federal court lawsuit
in New York.

They anticipated that Tom Brady
would file an appeal, as he did.

They wanted to win the race
to the courthouse because
they preferred to be

in a court in New York,
than a court in Minnesota.

[Michael]
Tom Brady faced a tall task
in getting the suspension

vacated by a federal judge.
Federal judges rarely
vacate arbitration awards.

And normally, under the law,
the arbitrator has to make
serious, grave mistakes

for an arbitration
award to be vacated.

And yet, here,
judge Richard Berman found

that such mistakes existed.
Roger Goodell,

according to judge Berman,
didn't adequately warn
Tom Brady

about the appropriate
punishment.

There was no so-called notice.
But beyond that,

Tom Brady
was never clear about
what rules he actually violated.

Was he getting in trouble
because of a phone,

a so-called
destruction of a phone?
Was he getting in trouble

because it was more probable
than not that he had
general awareness,

according to Ted Wells?
Was he in trouble
because he was a ringleader?

It was never clear what
he was being punished for.

Part of the outrageous
violations of due process

is they tried to
have it both ways.
They declared that they were

engaging in an independent
investigation, hired outside
independent investigators.

Paul Weiss, their law firm.

Tom Brady never got a chance
to cross-examine Jeffrey Pash.

Let's remember
who Jeffrey Pash is.

He's the NFL's general counsel,
but more importantly,

he's the co-lead investigator
into the Deflategate
investigation.

And then when it got very
inconvenient to turn over
some of the notes from

the interviews of that so-called
outside investigation,
independent investigation.

They said, "Oh, we don't
have to ta-- we don't have
to turn them over,

they're shielded
by lawyer-client
confidentiality privilege."

That's actually a big deal.

How can Tom Brady
challenge the science,

the core allegation that there
was a deflation conspiracy,

when the NFL doesn't
share its investigative notes
that led to that conclusion,

you know, in science,
a key tenant is,
you let people review it.

That's how science works.
It's not, here's my conclusion.

I'm not going to tell you
how I got there. Right?

We don't call
that credible science.

And so if you don't turn over
the notes to the defense,

they have no ability
to cross-examine

and to attack the Wells report,
unless they have
the notes before them.

So, to say disingenuously,
"Well, we never used the notes.

We never relied on the notes,
we just relied on
the Wells report,"

when the Wells report
relies on the notes.

And then to shield it all under
lawyer-client confidentiality,

where your--
where your lawyer is

your outside
independent investigator,

and yet, in the hearing,
then conduct some of
the cross-examination.

It's just below the minimum
standards of decency and--
and fairness and process.

You go into the text of
the appeal, "11 of the full

New England footballs
were tested at halftime,
all below the prescribed

air pressure ranges
measured in each of
the two gauges

four of the Indianapolis
footballs were tested
at halftime as well

and all were within
the prescribed
air pressure range

in at least one
of the two gauges.

It's really kind of crazy,
because the balls had to be

below 12 and a half,
because of the ideal gas law.

They continued to repeat
that right to the end.

Their counsel continued
to repeat it in briefs.

That statement is literally true
but it is false in context.

It is misleading,
it is consciously deceptive,

and it is pragmatically false,
it puts the reader out of

working touch with reality.
It put the court out of
working touch with reality.

[Daniel]
In the brief that the League
filed with the second circuit,

they said with respect
to whether these notes
were important or not.

They said, "Well, it really
didn't matter because
Mr. Brady's

lawyers were present
at most of those interviews."

Mr. Brady's lawyers were
present at one interview.

His own.
Even the Patriots' lawyers...

we were not allowed to be
present at the key interviews,
as to which notes were sought.

There were two questions
he left undecided.

He found for Brady on three
and left two undecided.

One of them was the process
notes, the failure to turn
over the interview notes.

When it went up
to the second circuit,
the second circuit said,

"Well, we can decide those.
Ordinarily, we might remand,

but we can decide these
questions right now.

We don't have to send
it back to the second--
to the District Court.

Uh... the interview notes
are not significant.

No one's told us
why they are needed."

That's why I went--
when I read that, I went,
"Oh, come on!"

Among the misstatements
that are made,

are statements that Brady's
phone contained evidence...

that would support his
involvement in this scheme
to deflate.

That was made up
out of whole cloth.
And they made it appear that

the evidence of deflation
was over-- overwhelming,

and that Tom's involvement
was overwhelming.

[news reporter]
Lawyer, Paul Clement is
fighting back

against reports that
he lied to judges

during the League's
appeal of Tom Brady's
overturned suspension.

And the League,
even when this was called
to their lawyers' attention,

refused to correct
those misstatements.

And that I find,
uh, very, very troubling.

It's one thing to...

state your legal positions
and, as I say, put the best
spin on the--

on the record, but it's another
thing to misstate things.

It became very apparent
early on that Tom Brady
was going to lose.

Suspending Brady
for four games is laughable.

For four weeks,
Tom Brady will be denied

the joy of 300-pound men
trying to kill him.

-[audience chuckle]
-Instead, he is stuck
with a month

of vacation and nothing
to console himself
but millions of dollars,

his still valid championship
ring and his supermodel wife.

So, the system works.

There are two
separate questions.

One is, were the balls deflated?
Did Brady cheat?

The second is, who decides?

As the case progressed to
the second circuit,

and the science became
completely debunked,

what the league grasped onto,
well, they tried to divert
it to the cell phone,

but what they--
the essential principle that
they really clutched on to was,

look, whether or not they're--
the science has anything to say

about whether they were--
that's not the issue!

Facts aren't an issue here.

What's an issue is,
who has the right to decide?

What animated
the judges was that,

the Union that Tom Brady
is a member to,

gave Roger Goodell essentially
unlimited discretion

in deciding what happened,

and that Tom Brady was
asking for safeguards

that weren't actually listed in
Article 46 of the collective
bargaining agreement.

Two of the three judges said,
"Whether it's unfair or not
really isn't important."

What matters is that
the Union agreed to a policy

that allowed Roger Goodell

to reach conclusions that you
could say, defied science.

So, after Tom Brady lost before
the second circuit panel,

he petitioned for
an en banc review,

which is where all
of the active judges on
the court hear an appeal.

He'll fight his
Deflategate suspension.

His lawyer's filing
this document today,

asking the entire
second court of appeals

to rehear his case
and toss out his suspension.

They're almost never granted,
less than one percent
of the time,

and really only in
exceptional circumstances.

We don't want to
talk about the facts.

We just want to talk about who
has the right to decide,

the Commissioner has the right
under the CBA to decide it,

Commissioner decided it,
end of story.

Commissioner has the right
to judge his own appeal,
end of story.

Now, the major United States
Supreme Court case

that emphasizes that the courts
are supposed to stay out of it,

Misco provides a--
an exception to that,

when the courts
can get involved,

and that's in the case
of evident partiality,
bias and fraud,

and there was evident
partiality that saturated

the entire investigation
in the Wells report

and the Commissioner's
decision on appeal.

Bias and fraud in
the shift of the rulers.

But again, the Players'
Association never played Misco.

[Michael]
He was able to enlist the help
of the New England Patriots,

who filed an amicus brief.

An amicus brief is
a friend of the court brief.

It's not a binding document,
in the sense that,

it doesn't force
the court to do anything,

and then Tom Brady, of course,
got Ken Feinberg.

Ken Feinberg to
file an amicus brief.

Ken Feinberg is one of the most
influential legal figures

in the last 20 years
in the United States.

These are really
significant voices.

[reporter] He will not be able
to have a rehearing which he
was petitioning for...

Going to the Supreme Court for
anyone is profoundly difficult.

The Supreme Court only takes
about one percent of petitions,

and they tend to be in cases

that are of significant
policy implications.

Although Tom Brady's case is
certainly of national interest,

it doesn't necessarily impact
people across the country.

The problem here for the
Supreme Court to take this case,

is that, it wasn't
a representative example,

for the court to review
the powers of management

to discipline employees,

that an NFL player is different
from a regular Union employee,

on all sorts of levels,

including the system of justice
that the NFL has,

which is so stacked
in favor of the NFL.

Typically, when an
employee is punished,

there's a panel that reviews
the employee's punishment.

There's usually one
person from management,

one person from labor
and then someone neutral.

In the NFL, it's the same
person that found the facts,
that issued the punishment,

he comes back again--
I mean, it's this really
unusual system that,

for the Supreme Court
to take a case...

that delves into really
important issues of,

when can management
punish employees?

And what are the rights of
employees to contest those
punishments?

This wasn't a good case to do.

We also know that Tom had just
wanted to stop at that point.

It was just a personal decision.

So I tried to come out here and
just focus on what I need to do

to get better and help our team.

Like I said, I'll be, you know,
excited to be back when I'm back

and I'll be cheering our team on

and hoping we go out
and win every game.

[Robert]
Even as we disparage justice,

there is no justice,
there couldn't be,

"The strong do what they can,
the weak accept what they must,"

there's a part of us that does
believe in justice, most of us.

And we look to sport as one of
the places to establish justice,

through the outcome.

I got thrown back to the--
[stutters]

the medieval way of determining
a person's innocence or guilt,

and whether they
had violated the law,

and that was trial by ordeal.

When they didn't have
evidence sufficient to
either acquit or convict,

there were several
ways of handling it.

One way was to force
the accused to put his
hand on a... [stutters]

on a hot-- red, hot iron rod
and then immediately
bind up his hand,

and three or four days
later take off the bandages,

and if he-- his hand was clean
and clear and unblistered,
then he was innocent.

The point was that,
when Brady refused
to engage his own defense

actively throughout
the Deflategate controversy,

leaving it to
the lawyers to handle it,

and essentially saying that he
would settle it on the field.

There's a sense in which,

trial by ordeal was
settling it on the field.

[upbeat music]

[somber music]

And we're playing the Falcons.

And as everyone saw, we were
getting our asses kicked.

The end of the second half,
my mom was defeated.

She's texting my uncle,

"When are we going to get
out of here?"

[Jerry]
Desperate times.
He needs to move the ball.

The clock is running, the
Patriots are casual about this.

It's like they're running
seven-on-seven drills
in training camp,

and you're going, "Does anybody
care that the clock is running?"

-[crowd cheering]
-[commentator] Touch-down,
at last.

Here is Coleman,
end zone, touchdown.

[David]
One minute left
in the third quarter.

We're down 28 to three.
Not over yet.

Like, you guys
have to understand,
this game's still going.

[shouting]

He hits Danny Amendola
on a deep cross,

and now you start to think,

this actually maybe
could happen.

[uplifting music]

The Patriots catch a break,
where the ball's kind of tipped

and Julian keeps
fighting for the ball.

He ends up with his
hands under the ball
and he makes the catch,

and it just didn't seem, like,
possible that he would
make this catch.

And then, as they put on one
scoring drive after another,
you felt it all change.

Gotta lock in now, laser focus!

[David]
Tom Brady really wanted this
game more than anything,

and if I know one thing
about Tom Brady,

if he wants something,
he's going to accomplish it.

They were able to take
everything the NFL did to them

and spin the table
and counterpunch them,
right back in the solar plexus.

It was beautiful.

[crowd cheering]

You can look into the
Super Bowl as a trial by ordeal.

That he would, in fact,
make the statement as to
his own guilt or innocence,

on the field.

And if we embraced that notion,
that you can make a statement
on the field,

then Tom Brady made the most
emphatic of statements,

in his own defense.

His victory.

Goodell put a lot
on the line with Deflategate.

And ultimately,
in a technical sense, he wins.

Though I think it really
damaged his reputation.

I think it led to an outcome
that a lot of people think
doesn't make sense.

And here's the thing.
Brady has taken the high road.

Personally, I'm an asshole.
I like the low road.

The low road is a much
easier road to travel,

you get much better
mileage that way,

it's where all of
my friends are.

I think the best revenge
is a life well led,

and holding up
another Lombardi trophy,

in the middle of another red,
blue and silver confetti shower,

is going to be their
revenge in the long run.

If this happened to Tom
and the Patriots,

no player and no team
is safe from...

the whims of the League office.

I really do think
that in the long run,

the truth is gonna--
is gonna win,

and-- and that the facts will
come out and people are smart.

Collectively, we're smart.

That's the whole beauty
of the jury system,

it's that when you put six
or twelve people together

that don't have
a stake in the dispute,

that collectively,
more often than not,

they're going to reach
the right conclusion.

And-- and I truly believe
that we can get there.

In this world, we seek justice.

Thucydides,
the ultimate realist,

said it best,
when it came to justice.

He said, "Justice depends
upon the equal power to compel.

The strong do what they can,
the weak accept what they must."

In the end, the NFL,
the strong party and power,

won their court case.

In the end, the legal verdict
is that Tom Brady cheated.

That's the legal verdict.

That's not
the historical verdict.

History has a way of getting
the last word on these things.

[uplifting music]