Roger Goodell says Brady appeal is about the CBA


NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spoke about the league's decision to appeal Judge Richard M. Berman's decision that overturned Tom Brady's four-game Deflategate suspension.



The league formally filed it's appeal a few days ago, and with that appeal came another ridiculous statement.

"Stripped of its celebrity, this case involves a straightforward exercise of authority expressly granted under a collective bargaining agreement ("CBA") and shielded from collateral attack by decades of precedent concerning labor arbitrations. The National Football League's collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association affords the NFL Commissioner broad authority to impose discipline for conduct "detrimental to the integrity of, or public confidence in, the game of professional football." Exercising that authority, which mirrors the broad discretion given to commissioners in other sports to ensure the integrity of the game, the Commissioner suspended Tom Brady, quarterback on the New England Patriots, for four games after finding that Brady had participated in a scheme to deflate game balls to be used in a conference championship game. The scheme was aimed at gaining and unfair competitive advantage on the field, and it was devised to avoid detection by game officials. It struck at the heart of the game's integrity and the public's confidence in the NFL's on-field product. The Commissioner's conduct detrimental authority exists for incidents just like this."

Brady participated in a scheme to deflate game balls to be used in a conference championship game? So now he's 100% guilty? It's not "more probable than not" anymore?

This is one of the reasons the NFL lost its initial case - it couldn't come up with a concrete story.

Again, this has nothing to do with deflated footballs anymore, but the fact that they'd throw that about Brady in there shows the ineptitude of the league to look at what they had in front of them.

The league talks about how it has a right in the Collective Bargaining Agreement to appeal the judge's decision, and that's all well and good, except they themselves circumvented the CBA on numerous occasions throughout this entire scandal. We won't get into all the specifics because that'd take too long and we all know what went on.

What makes the NFL's case any stronger this time around? We'll have to wait and see. Hearings for this case will be heard as early as the first week in February, so Brady's status for the rest of this season and a potential Super Bowl appearance won't be hindered.

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