Are These 5 Patriots Championship Rings Now Tarnished?

[sports-rings]

5. Belicheat and Brady will just dodge the questions like they usually do.

Phil - Great answers!

To expand on #5, while I agree those two will try to downplay and doge the questions, in similar fashion to the Rice incident, I see this story continue to grow because of fan outrage and media attention.

This story will be a big deal up until kickoff of the Super Bowl game. The main stream media is reporting on this, it even was showcased very early on the NBC nightly news last night (they show the biggest stories first).

Now I see petitions are popping up on Facebook and the internet and local sports talk radio is mentioning that the other owners, especially the Ravens ownership is outraged and will be putting pressure on Goodell to do something strong and harsh.

[vthobby]

The only thing the the other teams and owners will do is to continue to lose games to the Patriots.

I am quite enjoying the extra storylines associated with the Super Bowl (I mean the big game).

Defalte gate. Seriously......too funny!

Peace, Mike

[pgellis]

Hi Michael,

I think further information needs to come out before a penalty can be assessed. What's being talked about on Boston sports radio this morning is that there is a very high probability that the Patriots were warned of this since the Colts brought it to the attention of the NFL back after they played in November........and then they still did this.

Another issue is that if the balls were checked prior to the game (which has been reported) and then the Patriots let air out of the balls between that pre-game check and half-time, then they are guilty of tampering with the balls after they were checked.

After the Ray Rice incident and Adrian Peterson incident, Goodell now has an itchy trigger finger. So, if they were warned and still did it, Goodell should hand down suspensions..........not necessarily for the Super Bowl, but at least for part of next season.

Also, Belicheat is a past offender so that should weigh into the punishment.

Do you really think that this was the first time they decided to do this?

[gregr2]

I believe Belichik knew. I also think they will distance themselves from it by saying some ballboy did it without their knowledge and they have now fired him.

[btcarfagno]

I heard an interesting thought as to the punishment that would stop all of this BS really fast.

A fine of the team won't do diddly. What will the fine be? $500,000? Maybe $1 million? The Pats made that back and 10x more by winning the Ravens game, being able to host another playoff game, and getting to the Super Bowl. That sounds like pretty good risk/reward to me. A suspension of the head coach during a game is meaningless. If he can have no contact with the team for however many weeks I suppose that would be somewhat interesting, although knowing Belichick he would just find a way around that too.

What would absolutely stop this and any other inane shenanigans in the future is to hit the team with a salary cap hit. $15 million for 2015, $10 million for 2016 and $5 million for 2017. If the union bitches about it then disperse the amounts among the other teams, thus the total league wide figures would not change. now THAT would put an immediate stop to all of this REALLY quickly.

Tom C

[pgellis]

AH HAHAHA!

Belicheat just threw Shady Brady under the bus!

[sports-rings]

Throwing Brady or the ball boy under the bus won't fly. The NFL in bounty-gate explained that the Head Coach is ultimately responsible.

The most troubling aspect of this to me is two things:

1) The Ravens lost a very close game and it appears the Ravens believed the Pats were using under-inflated footballs.

2) The integrity of the games is of the utmost importance. Once the public feels that games are not being played fairly, that is a catastrophic public relations hit for any professional sports league.

I believe the media and the other owners will put a lot of pressure on the NFL, and this combined with the first incident known as Spy-gate will lead to an unprecedented punishment by the NFL.

Perhaps as a Jet fan, this is just wishful thinking, but this will be fascinating to watch over the next few days.

This link would can show you how to properly clean a tarnished ring.

http://www.ehow.com/way_5252185_home...shed-ring.html

J.