Brace Yourself: Tom Brady’s Appeal Results Will Be a Prime-Time Affair
Grab some popcorn (extra butter, of course) and a large Coke, get a seat smack-dab in the middle of the theater, and make sure nobody sees you pouring a flask into the aforementioned large Coke. Tom Brady’s appeal results ain’t coming on a Friday afternoon news dump.
The NFL is going to announce his hearing results when they know (not think, KNOW) that everyone and their mom is paying attention.
There was quite a bit of speculation that the results of Tom Brady’s we-totally-need-more-time-to-finish-this-thing appeal with the NFL’s ruler of the Iron Throne on June 23rd, 2015 would be released on the afternoon leading into the 4th of July weekend, for a couple different reasons:
- The briefs from Tom Brady’s appeal were due the week of July 4th, according to Fox Sports. If you were wondering why an appeal that lasted 10 hours with the NFL commissioner present for the whole appeal needs briefs, which are pretty much CliffsNotes, you’re not the only one.
- The NFL just looooooooooooooooooooooves to release bad news around 3-4pm on a Friday, like we’re all going to be too busy stuck in traffic on I-84 to notice. Just before we all dipped out of work/class on July 2nd, which was basically a Friday because of America’s birthday, the NFL suspended these four unfortunate dudes:
-Sheldon Richardson (Jets DT, substance abuse, 4 games…LOLJets)
-Rolando McClain (Cowboys LB, substance abuse, 4 games)
-Datone Jones (Packers DE, substance abuse, 1 game)
-Antonio Gates (Chargers TE, performance-enhancing drugs, 4 games)
Surely, NFL Network got to work breaking down Antonio Gates’ updated fantasy football draft value right away.
(If you can detect the sarcasm, I would hope so, because I’m laying it on pretty thick)
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the 4th of July weekend came and went without any type of update on Tom Brady’s suspension limbo. In hindsight, this is pretty understandable. If the briefs were due at the end of last week, expecting the NFL to make a decision on an appeal that quickly when Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy’s appeal results have been slow-cooking for 39 days and counting (his appeal was May 28th) is kind of silly.
With all the details of the Wells Report, whatever “additional information” the NFL wants to take into consideration, and the appeal hearing and briefs to review, it’d be understandable if a more-probable-than-not-general-aware minor rules violation ended with Goodell and friends yelling “LOUD NOISES! I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT!!”
On a slightly more serious note, if you recall when the NFL announced Tom Brady’s suspension, and the accompanying penalties to the Patriots, when was it?
Monday afternoon, definitely after lunch, and right about the time most of us were putting the new covers on our TPS reports and getting ready to peace out of the office.
AKA, the time when nobody’s really working and you’re putting in as much effort as possible to do anything except actually work/pay attention in class.
Followed by a week’s worth of breakdowns, takes, and gum-flapping on ESPN, NFL Network, CNN, the freakin’ O’Reilly Factor, and anything else on the air, in print, and online.
So, from the NFL’s perspective, the appeal results might as well be announced when they know everybody is going to be in the loop. Shoot, they need to be.
Why?
Why not??
All jokes about Roger Goodell being stupid aside, he has to be aware that the silver (green?) lining in all of this DeflateGate/Ballghazi mess is that the NFL stays on TV and on the front page of whatever your favorite sports site is at the absolute deadest time of the year on the sports calendar. The NBA Finals and draft are over, the U.S. Women just crushed the World Cup, the Stanley Cup is done, and baseball is relying on a video-game-bonus home run derby and the All-Star Game to keep people interested.
Heck, there’s a Tom Brady Suspension Timeline on NFL.com for you to read to keep track of all the developments from an erroneous ESPN report and the resulting Monty Python witch-hunt – complete with advertisements for NFL Red Zone, NFL photo galleries, NFL Ticket Exchange, you name it. The longer this sticks around, with most of the country firmly entrenched in the screw-the-Patriots-because-they’re-good-and-got-caught-cheating-once-in-2007 zone, the better it works out for the NFL, and, by extension, all of the people they do business with.
The only real question is whether the NFL will drop the Tom Brady Appeal Saga results on a Monday afternoon after everyone’s done reading 5,000 words of the Monday Morning Quarterback and 10 Things I Think, or on (Mike! Mike Mike Mike! Guess what day it is!!) Hump Day.