Is Anyone Telling The Truth?
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Roger Grossman, Lake City Radio-
What he meant was, when your credibility is priority No. 1.
He was right.
We are constantly challenged to try to figure out when someone is telling the truth and when someone is lying to us. Is the sales person giving you a fair assessment of the used car you are thinking about buying? Is your employee telling you the truth about how that palate of product tipped over? Is your teenager being straight with you about why he or she was 25 minutes late for their curfew?
Politicians don’t count here since we assume they are all lying every time they open their mouths.
In the world of sports we see this all of the time, too.
A coach whose team was just awful will step to the podium and try to feed us a line about how “this game is just ONE game” and “it’s not the end of the world” and “we didn’t play that badly.”
Or sometimes we get the opposite, like former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, who used to sing the praises of Navy teams who hadn’t lost to the Irish in three decades. He’d say something like “I really and truly believe that this Navy team is one of the toughest, most resilient teams we’ll see all season and I expected to be in a real dog fight Saturday.”
And it was usually followed by a 48-3 win.
But we are faced with a particularly tough case to figure out right now.
Who do you believe … the Patriots or the National Football League?
Even people who live under rocks know that the Patriots organization is being punished for deflating footballs used in the AFC Championship game in January below the allowable level. The penalties included a 4-game suspension for quarterback Tom Brady, a $1 million fine for the franchise and the loss of one draft pick in each of the next two NFL Drafts.
The Patriots have completely refuted the findings of Ted Wells, who investigated the case for the league.
Well, some of them have refuted it anyway.
The Wells report admits to not having direct evidence that Brady knew that two men who worked in the equipment room for the Patriots had deflated the game balls below what the rules allow, but its circumstantial case is pretty convincing (unless you are a Pats fan or a member of the Boston media member).
Team owner Bob Kraft, who is one of the more-respected owners in the NFL, says he talked to Brady and believes everything his quarterback says.
Kraft, however, refuses to answer why those two guys from the equipment room have been suspended by the team. If they didn’t do anything wrong, why were they punished?
Interesting, right?
So when the scandal first broke, I and others screamed “CHEATERS!” Remember, the Patriots were accused of and confessed to filming an opponents practice prior to a Super Bowl in order to steal secrets of their game plan.
And now this.
When asked at a public speech in New England if he WAS a cheater, his response was “I don’t think so.”
You what?
The Patriots will try to tell you that the cold weather changed the PSI of the footballs and they didn’t do anything wrong. They stand defiant for anyone to prove anything against them.
But they can’t and won’t account for the 90 seconds where the balls took a detour on the way to the field into a men’s bathroom.
And when they checked the balls at halftime, they were too flat.
So that’s it, right? Guilty as charged.
Nope.
See, the league has its own set of credibility problems here.
The Ray Rice two-game penalty that got upgraded to a season-long ban after the video surfaced from inside the elevator where he punched his then-fiancée so hard he had to drag her out of the elevator by her hair because she was unconscious.
There was the Greg Hardy situation, in which the Carolina Panther was convicted in a bench trial on a domestic violence charge. But then he appealed and some quirky point of law allowed the original verdict to be thrown out and Hardy got a “do over” in front of jury. The league response was underwhelming.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has been under pressure for these issues and a general view that he has acted as “judge, jury and executioner” of player discipline cases.
So … who do you believe?
That’s the problem, is either side very credible?
Not really.
Which leaves us in the same place we are with the politicians.
Nowhere.
Parents, I know a lot of you preach to your kids “if you do something bad, just SAY so” — the punishment will be much less.
Thanks for that.
Now if we can just get the adults to follow suit.[[In-content Ad]]
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What he meant was, when your credibility is priority No. 1.
He was right.
We are constantly challenged to try to figure out when someone is telling the truth and when someone is lying to us. Is the sales person giving you a fair assessment of the used car you are thinking about buying? Is your employee telling you the truth about how that palate of product tipped over? Is your teenager being straight with you about why he or she was 25 minutes late for their curfew?
Politicians don’t count here since we assume they are all lying every time they open their mouths.
In the world of sports we see this all of the time, too.
A coach whose team was just awful will step to the podium and try to feed us a line about how “this game is just ONE game” and “it’s not the end of the world” and “we didn’t play that badly.”
Or sometimes we get the opposite, like former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, who used to sing the praises of Navy teams who hadn’t lost to the Irish in three decades. He’d say something like “I really and truly believe that this Navy team is one of the toughest, most resilient teams we’ll see all season and I expected to be in a real dog fight Saturday.”
And it was usually followed by a 48-3 win.
But we are faced with a particularly tough case to figure out right now.
Who do you believe … the Patriots or the National Football League?
Even people who live under rocks know that the Patriots organization is being punished for deflating footballs used in the AFC Championship game in January below the allowable level. The penalties included a 4-game suspension for quarterback Tom Brady, a $1 million fine for the franchise and the loss of one draft pick in each of the next two NFL Drafts.
The Patriots have completely refuted the findings of Ted Wells, who investigated the case for the league.
Well, some of them have refuted it anyway.
The Wells report admits to not having direct evidence that Brady knew that two men who worked in the equipment room for the Patriots had deflated the game balls below what the rules allow, but its circumstantial case is pretty convincing (unless you are a Pats fan or a member of the Boston media member).
Team owner Bob Kraft, who is one of the more-respected owners in the NFL, says he talked to Brady and believes everything his quarterback says.
Kraft, however, refuses to answer why those two guys from the equipment room have been suspended by the team. If they didn’t do anything wrong, why were they punished?
Interesting, right?
So when the scandal first broke, I and others screamed “CHEATERS!” Remember, the Patriots were accused of and confessed to filming an opponents practice prior to a Super Bowl in order to steal secrets of their game plan.
And now this.
When asked at a public speech in New England if he WAS a cheater, his response was “I don’t think so.”
You what?
The Patriots will try to tell you that the cold weather changed the PSI of the footballs and they didn’t do anything wrong. They stand defiant for anyone to prove anything against them.
But they can’t and won’t account for the 90 seconds where the balls took a detour on the way to the field into a men’s bathroom.
And when they checked the balls at halftime, they were too flat.
So that’s it, right? Guilty as charged.
Nope.
See, the league has its own set of credibility problems here.
The Ray Rice two-game penalty that got upgraded to a season-long ban after the video surfaced from inside the elevator where he punched his then-fiancée so hard he had to drag her out of the elevator by her hair because she was unconscious.
There was the Greg Hardy situation, in which the Carolina Panther was convicted in a bench trial on a domestic violence charge. But then he appealed and some quirky point of law allowed the original verdict to be thrown out and Hardy got a “do over” in front of jury. The league response was underwhelming.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has been under pressure for these issues and a general view that he has acted as “judge, jury and executioner” of player discipline cases.
So … who do you believe?
That’s the problem, is either side very credible?
Not really.
Which leaves us in the same place we are with the politicians.
Nowhere.
Parents, I know a lot of you preach to your kids “if you do something bad, just SAY so” — the punishment will be much less.
Thanks for that.
Now if we can just get the adults to follow suit.[[In-content Ad]]
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