Why This is the End of the Road for
Tom Brady’s Appeal

(and how we arrived at our employee policy)

Tom Brady is going to get screwed over in this Deflategate thing, and I’ll tell you why.

Yes, this will eventually tie into how we determined our employee policy, so bear with me for a moment.

First off, let’s just assume that Brady is 100% innocent. I know you probably don’t believe that, but you probably also haven’t read the Wells Report. Neither have I. We’re both missing a lot of info, and that’s not even the point of this piece. So let’s just make this assumption for this specific scenario, and save the Deflategate debate for another time.

Or, let’s not. Let’s assume Brady’s not innocent. Let’s assume he deliberately instructed those ball boys to deflate the footballs. Let’s assume he sucked the air out of them himself. Tampering with footballs in the NFL is a $25,000 fine. Not a $8 million fine and a suspension that’s the equivalent of a 42-game MLB suspension.

Either way, guilty or not, the NFL’s verdict was the gross overreaction of an organization looking to reassert its authority after last season’s off-field debacles (a move which may or may not be a deliberate PR play). No matter what Goodell’s decision regarding the appeal is, even if Brady has to serve the full 4 game suspension, even if it costs the Pats another chance at a Super Bowl, even if it taints Brady’s legacy as GOAT, unless Goodell completely overturns the suspension and brings it down to the more sane $25,000 fine it will most likely be the end of the line for Brady’s appeal.

Why? Because the next step in Brady’s appeal most likely involve a defamation lawsuit. And that would open the door for a subpoena being issued for Brady’s personal cell phone. And that would mean putting Brady in the very position that got him in trouble in the first place.

I don’t blame Brady for refusing to surrender his cell phone to the NFL and the inevitable public scrutiny that would surely follow. I would never want to subject myself to the exposure of letting someone scroll through a lifetime of texts and emails. I’ll go on record saying that I think Brady is an honest and upstanding guy, but come on, it’s Tom Fucking Brady. There’s probably a little dirt in that phone that would be best off Gawker’s front page. Unless Brady is 100% clean, it’s not worth taking that kind of risk in the pursuit of proving innocence.

Which brings me to the point of this article: live your life so that at any moment, anything on your cell phone or personal computer could be plastered here.

So that is our employee policy at hyp. And I am out of compliance.