I’ll admit it, I am not 100 percent ready for the National Football League season. Losing half your summer traveling to and from China will do that to a guy. But it’s coming, and it starts Sunday when the Pittsburgh Steelers meet the Minnesota Vikings in the Hall of Fame game. Most of you who read my ramblings each week ARE ready for football to come back at all levels, and I totally understand. It’s America’s favorite sport, and its competition isn’t that close. But do you know who really wants the NFL to get back on the field and start playing practice games? The NFL’s front office, that’s who. Last summer was rough, but the summer of 2015 didn’t get any better. Let’s review: • After getting out of his domestic violence conviction last summer, Greg Hardy not only got a contract with the Dallas Cowboys for the upcoming season, he got his 10-game suspension from the league reduced to four games in July. • Ray Rice and his wife did an interview with ESPN to say that he is a rehabilitated man from his domestic violence incident, and wants to be back in the league. But no team has stepped forward to offer Rice a second chance. He’s a running back, so chances are injuries will put someone into such a place where they will have to consider him as an option. • Johnny Manziel checked himself into rehab, and says he came out a new person. Johnny Football needs to become Johnny “Starter” in Cleveland this year or there won’t be a next year. • And then there is Tom Brady, the Patriots and Deflategate. Who could have imagined that we’d still be talking this week about the Pats playing with illegally underinflated footballs against the Colts back in January? But we are. Transcripts released yesterday from Brady’s testimony before a judge, under oath, revealed that Brady not only denied being part of a conspiracy to tamper with the footballs prior to the game, he didn’t even know what the rules were or care about PSI’s in football before their game with the Jets last season. Really? We’re supposed to believe that someone so meticulous in their preparation, so aware of every detail of playing the game of football just grabs the ball closest to him and throws it in a perfect spiral into the tightest of windows in the NFL. PLEASE! Brady says he never told anyone to change the pounds-per-square-inch, and he actually expects us to believe that. However, the two guys who were directly implicated by the league through a series of text messages between themselves and the star quarterback were suspended by the team. OK, so if NO ONE did anything wrong, why were they suspended? We also know that Brady’s cell phone mysteriously stopped working in the days leading up to his previous meeting with the league – so he got another one. How convenient. We also heard from the outspoken owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft, who once again last week shook his fist at all of us and said “My Tommy could never have done such a thing!” But in his rant at the podium at the start of training camp he refused to comment on two things: 1) Why are the two guys implicated in this mess not with the team anymore? 2) Why did Kraft already pay the hefty fine and agree to give up draft picks as part of the team’s “medicine” for its part in the cheating scandal? We’re not that dumb. So training camps are open, Brady is still on course to be suspended for the first four games of the season, and the Patriots are still defiant. And the league is in desperate need of games to be played. Any games. Heck, a flag football game with Hall of Famers would be a welcome change of pace. There will be plenty of story lines on the field, and Roger Goodell is counting the minutes until they take over the top headline of the blogs and websites that cover sports and the league. TICK TICK Mr. Commissioner.
