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Jan. 22, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
January 22, 2015, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, hey, look, I understand it.
I understand it totally, and I'm fine with it.
Don't misunderstand.
But folks, I got my audio soundbite roster here.
Sent to me by the estimable cookie.
The first 14.
How many sound bites do I have?
I've got I've got 24 sound bites in the roster today.
The first 14 are about air pressure in footballs in the National Football League.
And whether or not Bill Belichick needs to be put in prison needs to be suspended.
The Patriots need to be kicked out of the league all because of a possible rules violation regarding air pressure in footballs in games played by the Patriots.
Now I'm all for the attention to don't don't misunderstand here.
And I I addressed this in a way yesterday, and I feel like I ought to develop it a little bit more.
But it's it's a bit out of proportion and and look, don't I say this again, do not misunderstand?
It's not sour grapes at all.
I'm nobody more fascinated than I am by this.
And we're going to talk about it fully.
But at the same time, wouldn't it be great if there were even half the concern for the nation's rule book being obeyed and being enforced, and when it's violated, people being outraged and demand that action be taken against the perpetrator.
And of course, I'm talking about the Constitution.
And I'm talking about the body of law that exists in this country.
It's funny that the scrutiny that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and the Patriots are getting.
And the worry and the concern and the handring over the integrity of the game of the National Football League.
That's all fine and dandy, but isn't it funny how there isn't anywhere near that kind of scrutiny?
There isn't anywhere near that kind of concern or worry about the integrity of the Constitution in our founding document and so forth.
It's a striking comparison to me, folks.
It really is.
It's funny how in sports there is an overwhelming concern for fairness.
There's an overwhelming attention, amount of attention paid to obeying the rules and not cheating and not getting away with cheating.
And if you get caught cheating, the proper punishment being handed down in politics.
And by the way, what's all that rooted around?
Fairness, is it not?
I mean, why do you have rules in a sports contest?
Well, you have to have rules, obviously.
And look, I don't want to be ridiculous here, but one of the reasons for the rules is so that the contest, so the competition comes under some bailiwick known as fairness.
Now you know me, I have a problem with this whole concept of fairness anyway, in the sense that life is unfair and then a political party has turned fairness upside down into a uh perverted convoluted political concept.
But nevertheless, in sports it's what it's all about.
And in in politics, this notion of fairness is a moving target.
What's fair in politics is determined solely by whether or not it helps a Democrat Party or not.
And if something helps a Democrat Party, then it's fair.
No matter what they do, voter fraud, violating the Constitution, writing law from the Oval Office, writing law from any number of bureaucracies, infringing on the freedoms, the real human freedoms of the American people, lying to them left and right in order to impose upon them things they wouldn't otherwise if they knew support.
And ho hum, oh well, we'll just blame it on the Republicans not knowing how to play the game, right?
Yep, it's it's all, you know, there's no love in politics, folks.
The aggressor sets the rules if the Republicans can't fight the battle.
The problem is you have referees in sports, you got the league, the commissioner's office.
Where is that in politics?
Not the closest you can come to it's the Supreme Court.
When you get right down to it.
I just I find it I don't want to sit here and tell you it bothers me.
I don't want to sound all Pollyanish and like a Miss America contestant or something, not to insult Miss America or contestants.
But I mean I'm not trying to be trite here.
And I'm not I'm not trying to be naive.
I mean, it's it's it's this is to me a student of society and keen observer of sociological, philosophical, psychological movements.
It's all fascinating to me.
Because over here in the world of sports, none of this really matters.
Sports for most people is a getaway.
Sports for most people's an escape from the humdrum.
It's fantasy island.
It's pretend, and you know what I said.
The great thing about sports, and I'll share this with you one more time.
I was with the Kans City Royals after one season, uh, all the marketing representatives from all the teams get together at the winter meetings and the annual marketing meetings.
We have a speaker come in one year, was a sociology professor at Harvard.
And he looked apart, bald headed, glasses down on his nose, uh jacket with the leather patches on the sleeves and a pipe.
And he's standing up there lecturing us, but he had a brilliant thing to say.
He said, The great thing about sports is the one thing about sports sets it apart from everything else.
Sports is the one thing.
Now listen carefully to this because it is profound.
Sports is the one thing in which you can invest total passion without consequence.
Meaning you don't have to worry about opening yourself up, you don't have to be guarded.
You can't root for your team, your favorite players with everything you got.
You don't have to hold anything back.
You don't have to worry about being too honest and somebody taking advantage of you.
You don't worry about being too open and honest and being manipulated.
You don't have to worry about anything.
And then he said, after saying, sports is the one thing in which you can invest total passion without consequence, he paused at try that with your wife.
Your spouse, he meant, meaning nobody is totally open with anybody.
Everybody puts up some sort of boundaries to protect themselves.
But in sports, you can just forget all that and let it all go.
And people do.
And the evolution of media and celebrity and stardom and so forth, sports has always had a lofty position on our culture, but now it's even higher.
It's up there with royalty, it's up there with uh with actors, actresses, and so forth and so on.
But it it it it the the attention, the concern.
I've I've got audio sound bites here from people, ladies and gentlemen, who who will do anything to look past anything Bill Clinton's ever done, look past anything Barack Obama's ever done, but is demanding that Belichick be suspended from the game.
The same liberals, hell, not just all kinds of people who object to any holding to account, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, are the first people to demand that Belichick be sent to prison, exhibiting zero tolerance for the transgressions of Belichick, whatever they might be, or Brady in this case.
But there are so many subplots in this story.
I wish I had said this publicly yesterday.
I have to rely on Mr. Snerdley to confirm for you that I said this.
It was during a commercial break on the program yesterday, and we were talking about this this Patriots thing, and uh I I got on the IFB, the intercom to the staff on the other side of the glass, and I said, when this is all said and done, it isn't going to be about Belichick.
And they said, What do you mean?
What's Brady?
Right now, Brady's getting a pass.
Brady's the pretty boy.
Brady is the well, Brady's the guy everybody wishes he was.
And Brady's gonna get a pass.
But I said, but before this is all said and done, I mean, who who who benefits from deflated football, the quarterback?
Who touches the ball all the time at every quarterback?
And then last night, last night, here comes John Madden.
John Madden out of the woodwork and say, hey, well, I mean, it's clear that if anybody's responsible for this, it'd be the quarterback, and that would be Tom Brady.
Now there's even subtexts and subplots to that.
When's the last time you heard John Madden call out a player?
I mean, Madden doesn't do it much.
Even when he was working regularly in the NFL on CBS and then Fox and then uh NBC with Al Michaels.
You know, Madden's a guy, he's an NFL guy, and everybody in the NFL is great.
I mean, he's one of the greatest, greatest advocates, promoters, defenders of the league, the game there is.
I was shocked when he called out Brady like that.
And then I had to remember, Madden's a Joe Montana guy.
And there's just never no speculating idly.
This is the beauty of sports.
You can talk about it however you want.
It doesn't matter to anything at the end of the day.
And that's precisely what kind of amazes me about this.
It really doesn't matter to anything.
And yet, look.
That Harvard professor's exactly right.
Invest total passion without consequence.
I mean, it's all over the place.
I wouldn't, I don't know, but I would bet that Matt Drudge is getting record numbers of hits right now in the Drudge Report.
People trying to find out the latest on this.
As I say, 14 out of 24 sound bites I have today are about this.
And I'm here to tell you there have been far greater damaging transgressions that have really, really hurt people in this country that have come out of Washington that don't get any attention at all, and don't seem to amount to anything that people have grave concerns over.
And I just, you know, in one of my dreams and one of my fantasies, if the Constitution and if the laws of our country were treated with the same reverence and respect as the rules governing, in this case the NFL, do you realize how a screwed a Democrat Party would be?
You realize if there were this kind of attention from the fans, let's say the Constitution has fans, like the Patriots have fans and the NFL has fans.
You realize if the people of this country were as oriented toward fairness and adherence to the rules and angry at cheaters as, Upset with liars.
The Democrat Party would be in heap big trouble right now.
And you could play all kinds of games with this.
Okay, let's say in liberal conservative, the Patriots are the conservatives in this case, because everybody hates them.
Everybody says, oh, they want to get rid of them.
So what are the Patriots to do?
Well, if the Patriots follow the Republican playbook, then well, you can.
I'll tell you what I would do if I were Brady, too late for Belichick, you already had a presser today.
If I were Brady, his press conference normally on Friday, but he moved it up to four o'clock today, after this program, by the way.
And if I were Brady, I'd come out and I'd laugh, I'd be lighthearted about it.
It's just football for crying out loud.
We're talking about air pressure and footballs.
He said, Man, this is nothing.
I finally know what it feels like.
I finally know what President Obama feels like to have all these Tea Party people after him.
And that would end it.
The media would immediately be on the side of Brady, Belichick, and the Patriots.
That's how it works.
Anyway, I mean take a brief time out.
We'll get to the sound bites.
I'm sure you have uh comments you want to weigh in on all this.
And we shall get started with all the rest of it when we get back.
And hey, for you stick to the issues, people.
Don't sweat it.
We're gonna get to everything today.
In fact, and including.
You hear the big news yesterday, Department of Justice says, you know what?
Nothing to see here.
We're not gonna proceed in charging Officer Darren Wilson with any civil rights violations here in Ferguson, Missouri.
Yes, DOJ announced it.
Everybody's all happy.
Everybody's ecstatic.
Predicted this back in September, October.
They never had any evidence to charge him with anything.
All of this has been trumped up, but that's not the story, folks.
Yeah, they're not going to pursue Darren Wilson anymore, but they are going to continue to pursue the Ferguson police department and reform it to their specifications.
Make no mistake about it.
New York Times even alludes to it in their story about this.
The DOJ, the Obama administration, Eric Holder have already enforced reforms slash changes in the Newark police department, the Vegas police department, and it involves being less focused on crime.
You can imagine what it is.
And this is ongoing in Ferguson, but it's going to happen under the radar because everybody thinks the DOJ is pulling out since they said nothing to see here with uh with Darren Wilson.
State of the Union Address, my instincts right on the money, lowest ratings in 15 years.
It was an absolute total ratings bomb.
And I didn't want to watch it, my instincts write on the money.
But what is it?
Does this say the country's becoming more racist, Mr. Snerdley?
You the African American president, lowest State of the Union show ratings in I don't know how long.
Can we chalk that up to a racist viewing public?
Make no mistake, some might allude to it.
Brian Williams went to Cuba.
I'm not making this up.
NBC News and Nightly News uh anchor Brian Williams.
He actually went to Cuba and he's sitting down there talking to some 55-year-old Cuban woman, all concerned, and he's not the first.
He's worried that an influx of American dollars will forever ruin the revolution.
And you know how?
Well, an influx of new American dollars and a lot of American dollars will replace all those beautiful 57 Chevys and 58 Fords with modern automobiles.
I'm not making this up.
He actually asks a woman claiming to have a biology degree who actually works a freelance producer in Cuba.
Is this not going to end up being a good thing?
It's stunning to watch these uh things transpire the way they do.
Anyway, the Republicans that need to explain this vote in the Senate on global warming.
It's somewhat being misreported, although it is what it is.
And also the uh House Republicans have uh stumbled, made a mess of an abortion bill.
So there's all kinds of stuff we're gonna get to that in due course.
But deflate gate.
Who knew what when how did it happen and how did they get away with it and what should be done?
Let's start with the audio sound bites.
Bill Belichick.
I need to set this up.
Uh some of you, many of you maybe.
I assume all of you are sports fans.
When it comes to football and the playoffs in the Super Bowl.
Bill Belichick despises press conferences.
He doesn't enjoy them at all.
They are the worst aspect of his job.
He doesn't like dealing with them, and the reasons are many.
A, he doesn't want to divulge any information about his team.
He wants to keep everything or as much as he can secret.
But he is forced by rule again to face the press a minimum number of times a week during the regular season, and it increases in the postseason.
Players ditto.
They have to face the media.
They have to post-game any number of instances.
Belichick hates it.
He just despises it.
He doesn't want to divulge anything.
And there's a second reason why he doesn't like it, and that is he really thinks he's dealing with a bunch of clueless People that don't understand what he does.
He thinks the questions he get, he gets are stupid, and it's it's just a total waste of time to him.
So that that is something that's worthwhile knowing before we get into the audio soundbites of today's press conference, because Belichick showed up today and did a press conference and divulged more.
Well, he spoke more.
He said more words in an opening statement than anybody can ever remember, including the spygate days.
And then the second phase of his press conference when he went to questions, and that's where, and we have sound bites of that too, where the everyday Bill Belichick meeting the media surfaced.
He didn't have any information.
He didn't provide anything.
He didn't say anything that nobody knew.
But he spoke longer than he usually does.
So got to take a break here.
We come back.
That's the setup, put in context what you're going to hear.
Oh, yeah, that's a great thing, too.
Obama's got his nose out of joint because Boehner invited Netanyahu to address the House of Representatives without consulting the White House and including them in the invitation.
And Obama just in a childish little snit over it.
White House claiming they should be involved.
They should be extending the invitation.
What's Boehner doing doing that?
And the fact of the matter is, Boehner could invite anybody he wants to address the House.
Obama doesn't control it.
It's exactly what I've been talking about with separation of powers.
But Obama's running around now like a little kid with his nose out of joint.
It's me.
It's me if you want to do that.
Little power monger.
And so I think this is a little bit of payback.
And I hope Boehner keeps this kind of stuff up because this is this is this is provocative.
This is aimed right at Obama.
And it has to do with uh sanctions in Iran and there's all kinds of misinformation about it.
But that's that's effervescing out there as well.
But in the meantime, let me start.
I gotta grab a phone call first before we get to the Belichick sound bites, because I just straighten something out here.
And it's from my adopted hometown of Sacramento.
It's Kevin.
Glad you called, sir.
Thank you, Russia, and good morning.
I'm I'm sure I'm hearing you wrong, but it sounds like um you're kind of giving a pass to Tom Brady and Belichick about their lack of integrity or perceived lack of integrity knows.
Kevin, I need to ask you seriously, what in the world?
Seriously now, I'm not argumentative, I'm not trying to be contentious.
I want to know what did I say that makes you think I'm giving them a pass.
Well, the kind of tongue-in-cheek um advice to Tom Brady about you know, doing a press conference or what to say.
Only thing the quarterback needs to say is I'm dead serious about that.
You're you're you know you're you're making my point.
You are more upset over the fact I'm not ticked off about this as much as you think I should be.
And my point is I'm mad about it.
I'm intrigued by it, I'm interested in it.
But at the end of the day, it doesn't have any impact on your life or mine.
And it it it I wish people were as mad about being lied to by their president, as mad about vote fraud, as mad about what's being done to this country via illegal immigration and I wish people were as mad at that as they are at this.
I wish people really, really were concerned about the people involved and all these messes that have been made in this country being held accountable.
And I'm dead serious.
I think I'm trying to illustrate a point.
If Tom Brady goes out there today and says, you know, I finally understand what it's like to be Obama being hounded by the Tea Party, you watch what would happen.
There'd be an immediate outpouring of sympathy for the guy from some quarters.
I'm not saying it'd get him out of it, but you know as well as I do that he would form a bond of a look at when you've got a guy at ABC named Brian Ross, and there's a school shooting in Ohio, the first thing he does is try to find the name of a guy who did the shooting at a Tea Party roster for crying out loud, and you tell me that I'm the one not taking things seriously here.
I'm trying to tell you that this is all out of proportion.
Bill Belichick is not Barack Obama, but he's being portrayed as Darth Vader, and who knows whatever else.
In the meantime, we have a massively incompetent Secretary of State running around making a mess of everything around the world.
He he followed a massively incompetent Secretary of State named Hillary Clinton.
We've got an incompetent guy in the White House who's still running around wearing a Shea Guevara t-shirt as though it's still his junior year in college with the Chum gang, and he's making mince meat of the Constitution.
He is chipping away at liberty and freedom everywhere.
He's transferring wealth, he's raising taxes, he's creating more and more people in a state of dependence, unable to provide for themselves.
There's a genuine assault on the character and the makeup and the backbone of this country.
And I just wish it would be nice if just for a day there were the same kind of outrage and anger.
I'm not kidding you.
Got the sound bites here of people who think that Bill Belichick ought to be banned from the game.
And they are the same people who think Ken Starr was what was wrong with Monica Lewinsky gate.
The same kind of people who think Obama should get a pass on everything, same kind of people think Bill Clinton didn't do anything wrong, who think Belichick ought to be sent packing.
Bunch of hypocrites.
All right, now to the sound bites.
Here's Belichick.
I've met him a couple times.
I've run into him at the uh uh and this is just full disclosure.
I've run into him on the sideline a couple times.
I've run into him at the ATT celebrity pro am.
He's always been a nice guy.
He's but but he's he's he doesn't he's one he doesn't suffer fools at all, much less gladly or well.
And he he he doesn't like divulging secrets, anything, everything is a secret about his team.
He doesn't like answering questions about anything, and he doesn't.
And as such, the media thinks he's surly and mean and distant and uncooperative, and you have spygate in there.
And so now that this this deflate gate wouldn't have anywhere near the weight that it has if it hadn't been for Spygate back in uh 2007.
Anyway, Foxboro, Gillette Stadium, Belichick press conference, and they talk about the deflated ball controversy.
We have uh but two sound bites from his statement, and we'll get to the QA.
When I came in Monday morning, uh I was shocked to learn of the news reports about the uh footballs.
I had no knowledge whatsoever of this situation until Monday morning.
I've learned a lot more about this process in the last three days than I knew or had talked about it in the last 40 years that I've coached in this league.
I had no knowledge of the various steps involved in the game balls and the process that went through that happened between when they were prepared and went to the officials and went to the game.
Now you probably, if you haven't yet, are going to hear from the rest of the day into tonight.
You're gonna hear from sports analysis and experts that this is impossible.
Bill Belichick, why there isn't anybody that exhales in that building and he doesn't know about it.
Claiming he doesn't understand the process with the footballs, Belichick claiming that he didn't have any knowledge of the various steps involved in the game balls and how they end up as game balls.
And he says, I never, I've been in this league 40 years.
I have never had a conversation about air pressure in football.
Clearly, he's non-plussed by this, but you're you're gonna hear this stripped and take it apart.
You're gonna hear it analyzed and parsed, and he's gonna be proclaimed a liar and so forth.
I just would be great if it just happened once when Obama did a press conference, not some little idle fact check thing in the Washington Post the next day.
And I'm gonna drop it.
I've made my point about that.
We'll stick to the issue here.
Here's the next one.
The balls we practice with are as bad as they can be.
Wet, sticky, cold, slippery.
However bad we can make them, I make them.
And any time that players complain about the quality of the balls, footballs, I make them worse, and that stops the complaint.
There is never any Sympathy whatsoever from me on that subject.
Zero.
Tom's personal preferences on his footballs are something that he can talk about right there.
Much better detail and information than I could possibly provide.
There is a first.
That is the head coach of the New England Patriots.
Throwing this whole controversy over to Tom Brady and making it his.
And ladies and gentlemen, one of the one of the it may be even a written rule.
One of the rules of standard procedure for head coaches, assistant coaches in the NFL, they take the heat for the players.
After a game, things go wrong.
That's why you'll hear a coach say, This loss is on me.
We were out coached.
They take it on them to protect their players.
They do it to protect their players' uh uh psyche.
They do it to make sure their players don't get down in the dumps.
They they they take the heat.
It's part of the job.
So this is different.
This is the head coach moving this controversy out of his office and down to the locker room at Tom Brady's Tom Brady's locker.
When he said, Well, Tom's personal preferences.
There's something he can talk about.
Much better detail and information than I could possibly provide.
So and people are are focusing on that too.
Oh my gosh, I've never seen this before.
Head coach throw his own quarterback under the bus on this kind of thing.
But up here at the top, uh what I what I first heard that and I watched the press conference, this is uh I thought pretty smart.
Well, the balls we practice with are as bad as they can be.
They're wet, sticky, cold, slippery.
However bad we can make them, I make them.
And any time the players complain about it, I make them even worse.
I don't give them any sympathy whatsoever.
So he's setting he's setting the table here for the fact, hey, we got footballs in horrible condition all over this building.
We practice with them all the time.
Otto where I thought he was going.
It'd be totally understandable with me that some of those some of those balls mistakenly ended up in the game.
Because if he's gonna make the case that they purposely put balls in horrible condition as a practice technique, then makes perfect sense that a couple three of them might accidentally end up in the game supply on a Sunday.
And now let's go to the uh let's get a Q and A to Media Pounced after the statement that Belichick made, it it was time for the media to query and try to elicit even more from the coach.
I've told you everything I know.
Coach, what do you say you're I have nothing, I don't have an explanation.
Notwithstanding what you've said here today, there are a lot of people who are questioning your integrity who say that you were winning.
I've told you everything I know.
He just hates these these things.
I'm telling you, you can see it.
He's standing up there, and he's he has to answer these questions in these Nimrods, and he just doesn't enjoy it whatsoever.
And that's the typical press conference you get from Belichick.
One more media would not stick.
Do you ever remember?
I'm just gonna mention this one more time.
Just one more time.
I'm sorry to probably gonna bore you with or not bore you, but maybe irritate you, and I'll drop it.
Can you imagine a reporter saying, notwithstanding what you've said here today, Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, a lot of people questioning your integrity?
A lot of people questioning uh your can you ever imagine that ask that question being asked in the White House press room with a Democrat president?
You can't.
Anyway, one more bite and a quick timeout.
What do you say to critics who are challenging your character, which seems to go well beyond the sport of football?
Told you everything I know.
I would assume we've had conversations with Tom about this specific issue and what happened.
I have no explanation for what happened.
Coach, why do you think these controversies continue to follow you?
I don't have an explanation for what happened.
We're on to Seattle.
I don't have an explanation.
I've told you everything I know.
I don't know what happened.
We're on to Seattle.
I've given you everything I know about it.
I don't know any more than what I've told you.
I've told you everything I know.
We're on to Seattle.
I it's as funny as hell to me.
I just think it's grab a another phone call here.
This is uh this is Darla Deming, Washington.
Hi, and welcome to the EIB network.
Great to have you here.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet My only comment is I agree with you.
The news conference this morning was obviously completely out of line because the first thing uh Bill Belichick uttered out of his mouth was like us.
The first he'd heard about this was on the news.
It's over.
Move on.
There's nothing to see here.
You know, that's an That's an interesting observation.
The first thing he heard about it was on a news Monday, just like Obama.
There you have it.
Nothing to see here.
The only thing Belichick didn't say, he didn't say he was mad as hell about it, was going to get to the bottom of it and find out what happened.
I think that's too many words for Bill Belichick to utter at one time.
No, it's not.
Don't don't don't I'll tell you honestly, folks.
Do not be misled by the persona of Belichick in press conferences.
That's that's not who he really is.
That's an affected uh personality.
I mean, he's he's he's not Mr. Vivacious in color, but he's No, I I met that in terms of what you're saying.
And then he chooses what he says, and he chooses not to say more than he does.
Oh, exactly.
But but it's all it's all rooted in in secrecy.
He does not want it's the competitive nature of things, the competitive edge.
He just he's not going to divulge anything about his team.
He's not going to say a thing about it.
It's nobody's business.
He hates having to fill out injury reports required by the league.
Despises it.
I remember I was in a game in Pittsburgh.
Um Patriots and Steelers, and it might have been a playoff game.
And I think it was on an opening kickoff.
One of the Patriots played it might have been Rodney Harrison, for all I know.
Somebody was severely injured, might have broken a leg.
It was close to the Steelers' side lines.
The Steelers trainer went out because he would be on the scene first.
And the injury was, you could see that it was severe.
And so the Steelers trainer, good guy, runs out there, and the next thing I Belichick is halfway across the field demanding the Steelers trainer get away from his player.
You get away from my player.
I don't want you to my trainers will take care of it.
Our staff will take you get out of there.
And the Steelers trainer looked kind of sheepish and left.
And he never did get to the injured player.
He was on the way.
Belichick didn't want.
I mean, you're not gonna see a thing about my injured player.
You're not gonna think about this injury.
You're not gonna be able to tell your coach what happened after get out of there.
That's his attitude.
Here's Jerome Bettis.
Jerome Bettis, uh, up for the Hall of Fame again this year, number thirty-six for the Steelers.
He was on ESPN today after the Belichick press conference.
The uh the anchor said, he said a couple of things.
No knowledge whatsoever until Monday morning, uh, no further comment.
Uh on the NFL investigation, no explanation for what happened.
Do you believe Belichick, Jerome?
I actually do believe him.
Uh I think, you know, what he wanted to do was go out there and explain to everyone that he had no knowledge of this until Monday.
I think I really believe he did, because I think in the scheme of things from a coaching perspective, this is such a small, small issue that you probably would never deal with.
It's more issue between a quarterback and uh, you know, the the people who prepare the balls.
I think that's where the issue is.
Next up was Brian Dawkins, former uh defensive back for Philadelphia Eagles, also on ESPN.
They asked him if he believed Belichick.
It's just hard for me to believe.
A guy that is as detailed as he is.
We talked about all the ways that he messes up all the balls and all the different situations that they go through in practice.
You know, the first guy, I believe, to take a safety at one point in a game.
All those details.
It's hard for me to believe that he does not know anything about how the balls are prepped and taken back by the rest of the.
So you see, my friends, it's all over the place out there.
One more Nancy Armour, USA Today Sports Columnist.
Do you believe Belichick?
Bill Belichick oversees everything.
Nobody sneezes in that building without him knowing about it.
So if something like this was being done, you can be sure that he had some awareness of it.
She doesn't know.
She doesn't know that, and neither does Bettis, and neither does Dawkins.
They're just guessing based on uh their own intelligence guided by experience.
But Bettis, nah, it's beneath Belichick.
He couldn't possibly know, but the other two.
Oh probably in charge of it.
He's in charge of everything else that happens to that team in that locker room.
Back after this, folks.
NBC found a ball boy.
Ball boys, by the way, are the employees of the teams, none of the league.
NBC found a ball boy who said uh on the Today Show today, hey, hey, the quarterbacks tell us what they want with the balls.
The quarterbacks are responsible for altering the balls.
There you have it.
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