After last year's Deflategate controversy, the NFL announced it would collect PSI (pounds per square inch) data from random games throughout the season in an effort to better police what happens with footballs used on game day.
Did they release that data after the season ended? Of course not. Are they now maintaining that the "spot checks" were not even about PSI at all? Of course they are.
“We focus on procedure, balls being brought to the stadium,” NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent said on a conference call on Thursday, per The Boston Globe. “There was no violation of game balls being checked in at the appropriate time. There was no violation of game balls being in the officials locker room, being brought to the field, back to the locker rooms at halftime, and then the balls being brought back to the locker room post game. So it’s the procedure of the balls themselves.”
Vincent said that the same procedures will still be in place for the 2016 season and that there is no need to change them because there were no violations in 2015.
“There is no need for us to change our pregame protocol that pertains to game balls,” Vincent said. “We had no violations of that process, we’ll continue to [handle footballs] in the manner we’ve set forth.”
That explanation, predictably, aligns with what commissioner Roger Goodell said on the same issue in an early February appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, when he maintained that the "spot checks" were simply about deterrence.
On if the NFL conducted a scientific test to measure footballs and PSI throughout this season:
No, Rich, what the league did this year was what we do with a lot of rules and policies designed to protect the integrity of the game, and that's to create a deterrent effect. We do spot checks to prevent and make sure the clubs understand that we're watching these issues. It wasn't a research study. They simply were spot checks. There were no violations this year. We're pleased that we haven't had any violations and we continue the work, obviously, to consistently and importantly enforce the integrity of the game and the rules that are designed to protect it.
Is this all pretty disingenuous? Of course. Is there anyone that doesn't think the NFL would release every single data point if doing so proved definitively that the Patriots intentionally deflated footballs in the 2015 AFC title game? Of course not. But what else do we expect from Deflategate-related stuff at this point? It's a circus.
