More On The Cheaters

Tom Brady thinks TigerBlog is stupid.

It's okay. TB isn't offended.

After all, Brady thinks you're stupid too.

In fact, he thinks everyone who listened to him yesterday try to "aw shucks" his way through his press conference is stupid. Brady might as well have stood up there and said he didn't realize the footballs were brown or that there even were footballs, for as much as it seemed like he was telling the truth.

Basically, this is what TigerBlog thinks happened:

Brady at some point (last week, five years ago, who knows?) mentioned to his head coach Bill Belichick that he can throw better with a slightly deflated ball and wouldn't it be funny if they took some of the air out. Then there was silence. Then they smiled at each other. Then they did it.

TigerBlog also thinks that they did the same thing against the Ravens two weeks ago, when New England won 35-31 and every edge mattered. And they figured why take a chance on another close game last week against Indianapolis, and so what if it ended up 45-7? They were ready if it was close.

TigerBlog thinks they're both cheaters. Arrogant ones at that.

Can he prove it? No.

TigerBlog saw a lot of references to "A Few Good Men," with Belichick as Colonel Jessup, ordering the code red and all, on Twitter yesterday. While we're talking about "A Few Good Men," remember a much-less famous scene, where they're practicing the interrogation and Tom Cruise goes one question too far and asks if there was any indication of anything wrong and Kevin Pollak, pretending he's the witness, says something like "other than the dead body?"

It's the same thing here. Oh, nobody got killed or anything. Brady mentioned that. He said this isn't ISIS and nobody's getting killed.

That part, by the way, gets translated this way: "can everyone please stop talking about this and move on so I don't have to be bothered by this anymore?" In fairness, Brady did play to his strength, which was to try to charm and smile his way through it.

Anyway, TB's point about the movie quote is that just like something killed Santiago, in this case somebody let the air out of the balls.

To hear them yesterday, neither Belichick nor Brady would even acknowledge knowing anything was amiss. To TB, that's not the point.

The point is that if they truly didn't do anything, they'd be angry about it. Not deflective or dancing around it. Angry. As in: "Hey, I had nothing to do with this and I demand the NFL find out what happened. When I found out who did this, I'm going to punch their lights out."

Something like that.

There is no way TigerBlog will ever believe that a ballboy or someone else took it upon himself to do this and never said a word about it. Sorry. And TB doubts too many others believe it too.

TigerBlog is willing even to make this trade-off: Patriots lose big next Sunday and the Yankees win the next World Series. That's much he's rooting against the Pats.

In fact, what if you are a Pats fan? How does all this make you feel? Can you blindly root for your team, knowing that they've been caught cheating multiple times?

TigerBlog didn't even want to talk about this again after yesterday. He figured one day was enough, and he could spend today talking about something better, like Princeton vs. Rowan basketball or something.

First semester exams are ending here, and Princeton's winter teams can return to competition beginning tomorrow.

The winter season is an odd one around here. There are games earlier and earlier in November, which leads to long stretches of no games in December and especially in January.

Then? It's a full out sprint.

For instance, there were 18 Princeton athletic events played from Jan. 1 through the start of exams. There will now be 46 more played between tomorrow and a week from Sunday.

The basketball teams play Harvard (men home, women away) a week from today. Those games mark a stretch in which the two will pack their remaining 13 league games into a 40-day run.

The next men's basketball game is Sunday, when the Tigers take on Rowan at 2 at Jadwin. Princeton has never lost in 26 games against a Division III team immediately following exam break, and only one of those games - against the College of New Jersey in 1998 - was closer than 10 points. Most have been complete blowouts.

Rowan is traditionally a strong D3 team, and the Profs are 12-4 before their game against Ramapo tomorrow. For the record, TigerBlog has covered games at Rowan (which is in Glassboro and used to be called Glassboro State) and at Ramapo, which is in north/west New Jersey.

There will be home men's hockey Tuesday against Army in another return-from-exams game.

The women's basketball team is one of two undefeated teams in Division I, along with No.1 South Carolina. In men's basketball, there are two undefeateds as well, No. 1 Kentucky and No. 2 Virginia.

The Tiger women don't have a game to ease back into things and get their legs back. They'll jump into it at Harvard and Dartmouth after 20 days off.

Soon it'll be February, the shortest month of the year but one that is as busy as it gets in Princeton Athletics.

And also the month for the Super Bowl.

Hopefully the cheaters lose.