It's what happened in 2006 that makes Brady even less worthy of sympathy. It was that year that NFL quarterbacks, led by Manning and Brady, got the league to change its prior policy of having the home teams supply all the footballs. They argued that they are in essence artists who ought to have some control over the type of ball they throw, and the league agreed, allowing the visitors to bring their own balls. As part of the process, if it didn't already exist, specs were used as to the level of inflation those balls must possess, i.e.,within a certain range of air pressure.
Brady thus has known about the air-pressure rule since at least 2006. At that time he either got all that he wanted, including an acceptable range of PSI, from the NFL, or he at least got his primary wish of using his own team's balls and knew what the limits were on PSI. Either way and both knowing that this was a rule and the process for changing it if he was unhappy, he instead decided on his own that the rule could be discarded and avoided, and acted surreptitiously to do just that.
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If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. - Ulysses S. Grant, military commander, 18th US President.
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