Judge meant deal
Hey Brady, Goodell: Give a little
“In anticipation of tomorrow’s conference, counsel and the parties are requested to engage in further good faith settlements today. I will meet briefly with counsel and the parties tomorrow morning at 10:30 . . . for an update on your discussions.”
— U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman
It’s a darned good thing Judge Berman didn’t opt for a career in the exciting field of sports media.
Given the man’s inability to grandstand, his total disregard for hyperbole and embellishment and his nagging insistence on bringing logic and intelligence to every discussion, he wouldn’t have lasted a year.
And can you imagine Judge Berman trying to do one of those campy syndicated courtroom shows?
Plaintiff (holding ripped dress): “He said it would be ready on Friday. When I picked it up, it looked like it came out of a paper shredder.”
Defendant (rolling eyes): “It looks like that because she’s gained 160 pounds since she first bought it.”
Judge Berman: “Heyyyyyy, come on, why don’t you two kids engage in further good faith settlements? Today!” Ratings: 0.0. Judge Berman, distracted by sound mind and body, wants the upcoming National Football League season to begin on the field, not in the courtroom. And to make that happen, he wants our long national gridiron nightmare to come to an end.
He wants Roger Goodell’s people and Tom Brady’s people to get together — to huddle, you might say — and hash it out. We keep hearing about how the good judge can’t force our battered and bruised Deflategate combatants into a settlement, but come on: We’re all grownups here. We can see the winks and the nods.
Judge Berman doesn’t want a trial, so he’s floating a trial balloon: Find some middle ground, or one of you might wind up as America’s Biggest Loser.
In that spirit, I pose a question: How would you feel if Tom Brady pulled a Frankie Pentangeli and cut a deal?
I’m not asking Brady. I’m asking you — and by “you” I’m referring to the hardcore Patriots fans who are holed up inside their Gridiron Alamo, willing to fight to the finish.
How about Brady takes a one-game suspension and signs a piece of paper that doesn’t really cop to anything but gives NFL Boob in Residence Roger Goodell a chance to hitch up his emperor’s new clothes and walk the make-pretend walk of a winner?
Would that work for you? Works for me. Football fans in every city in America hold tight to their shared paranoia in how the refs, the broadcasters and the national media are out to get them, right? Especially Patriots fans. (See: Spygate, 2007.) Yet this is the rare occasion in which a lot of the national punditry believes in our boy Tom, believes he’s been folded, spindled and mutilated by the NFL’s fiddlin’ and diddlin’ Captain Queeg of a commissioner.
True, fans in Indy, New York, Baltimore, etc,. are going to cling to their Brady-as-cheater plot line no matter how this turns out. But when hard-bitten football writers with no connection to New England start going after Goodell, and when a glittering array of longtime Patriots opponents line up to support Brady, a picture emerges of a commissioner whose legacy is not unlike that lady’s dress in Judge Berman’s imaginary TV courtroom: Shredded.
And Tom Brady? He’s the former sixth-round draft pick who defied the odds and played his way right into the Hall of Martyrdom. He should have been given a parking ticket, but Goodell, having absorbed the findings of the independent/notindependent Wells Report (depends on what day it is), went for the four-game prison sentence.
For all we know, Brady would never suggest a onegame compromise. And for all we know a one-game compromise would never be accepted by the NFL, in which case this thing will drag on and Brady might get stuck with the four games.
Or maybe he winds up with no games, in which case ol’ No. 12 is on hand when ol’ banner No. 4 gets unveiled when the Pats host the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2015 season opener on Sept. 10. Maybe. In “Judge Berman’s Courtroom,” you give a little or else you may have to give a lot.
But one game or four games, it’s small potatoes compared with the penalty assessed to Roger Goodell: A lifetime of needing to explain how this one case turned his, you know, “shield” into a laughingstock.