GREGG DOYEL

Doyel: Tom Brady, DeflateGate villain

Gregg Doyel
gregg.doyel@indystar.com

It's worse than we thought. Well, not it. Him. Tom Brady. He's worse than we thought.

And we thought he was bad. Nah, we knew it. The Ted Wells report on DeflateGate made it clear the Patriots deflated footballs for the AFC title game against the Colts, made it clear which team employees did it, and left just about no doubt — for anyone outside of New England — that quarterback Tom Brady was ultimately responsible.

Tom Brady, cheater.

Then he appealed his four-game suspension on the grounds that he was innocent.

Tom Brady, liar.

Bad, right? But it's worse. No, not it. Him. Tom Brady. He's worse than a liar, worse than a cheat. He’s a man of low integrity.

Before Tuesday, he was merely a garden variety cheater. But the revelation that Brady had destroyed his cell phone before his interview with Ted Wells makes it clear what species, what kind of cretin, we’re looking at.

Tom Brady, shameless.

Brady has left Rafael Palmeiro territory, wagging his figurative finger at the camera and saying, “I don't believe so,” when asked if he’s a cheater, and entered the more nefarious neighborhood of Ryan Braun and Lance Armstrong. Rigged muscles, rigged footballs — it’s rigging the contest. Gaming the system. Cheating the other team from the fair game it deserves.

Before Tuesday, Brady was a basic cheater. He was Mark McGwire. Sammy Sosa. Ben Johnson. Floyd Landis. Just another jerk in a sports landscape that has revealed so many of them. But now we see the depths of Brady's desperation.

In an effort to save himself, baseball star Ryan Braun threw the innocent specimen collector under the bus. Cyclist Lance Armstrong threw pretty much everybody under the bus.

Brady threw Roger Goodell under the bus.

The way Brady did it was more subtle than the scumbag moves of Braun and Armstrong, but it was devastating nonetheless. By appealing his suspension based on the argument that the Wells Report hadn’t definitively proved a thing — a calculation Brady was making based on the phone only he knew he had destroyed — he knew he had an army of millions willing to do his bidding in his holy war with the unpopular Goodell.

Fans in New England. Fans in other cities who have come to distrust the admittedly distasteful Goodell. Stooges in the media, especially at ESPN, where Brady's guilt hasn't been debated so much as the absurdity of suspending a player four games for doing what Brady did.

Makes you wonder what people are missing. What they want to miss, in their desire to attack the dislikable NFL commissioner while absolving the more likeable Patriots quarterback.

It takes some ferocious mental gymnastics to get here, but this is where people got: They decided the periphery stuff — Goodell, Ted Wells, even Ray Rice and Greg Hardy — had more bearing on Brady’s punishment than one fairly clear fact:

Brady rigged the AFC championship game.

He didn't need to rig it. The Patriots have owned the Colts for years and would have owned them on Jan. 18, maybe even by a score of 45-7, had the football been made of Havarti. But Brady rigged the game before the Super Bowl. Put that in italics. Stress what happened, because this wasn’t just any game Tom Brady rigged. He rigged the game before the Super Bowl.

Brady tried, and he succeeded — whether he needed to or not — in deflating the football. He tried, he succeeded, in giving the Patriots an unfair competitive advantage in the biggest game of the season not just for his team, but for the team he was playing.

This cheating involved a needle, which supplies some symmetry. Brady was playing with a football on Nandrolone.

That alone deserves the four-game suspension. The latest revelation, that Brady didn’t merely fail to cooperate with the investigation but actively hindered it by destroying evidence?

Brady’s lucky Goodell didn’t increase the suspension to five games. If not more.

And maybe Goodell would have done that if it weren’t for the NFL commissioner’s genius at making money. The Patriots’ fifth game, Brady’s first, will be Oct. 18 at Lucas Oil Stadium against the Colts. In prime time. National television commercial spots are for sale as we speak.

And the people said: Cha-ching.

Brady went for it, though. Knowing what nobody, not even the NFL knew — that he had destroyed his cell phone — Brady appealed his suspension and sat back while his thugs in the media (social and mainstream) bullied Roger Goodell for him.

Goodell refused to cave. He upheld the suspension. Now the ball is back in Brady’s court, only this ball hasn't been rigged and this game will be fairly contested. Let’s call it Brady vs. The Truth, and if Brady does in fact sue the NFL as has been reported, well, we already know the truth.

Tom Brady, guilty.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel