Truth not needed when you can make stuff up

[TxHeat]

Former NFL official said he was long suspicious of Patriots' Jim McNally.

courtesy of WTHR Indianpolis reporter Bob Kravitz (who broke the deflate-gate story in the hours after the AFC championship game), who has former NFL linesman Mark Baltz saying that he was long suspicious of McNally, the game-day worker who served as a locker room attendant and was in charge of shuttling the Patriots' footballs to officials and then to the field.

“He always asked for the footballs way, way before he was supposed to get them,’’ said Baltz, who was an NFL official from 1989-2013. Baltz spoke to WTHR.com last week, before the pair was reinstated. “If he could get them 10 or 15 minutes before he was supposed to get them, instead of the usual two minutes before the game – and there were some crews that let him do that – he would do it. I wouldn’t let him take them early, and I think he eventually figured that out because he stopped asking after a while. I probably did 10 to 15 games up there (in Foxboro, Mass.) and those first few times, he’d always ask. I always thought it was very suspicious. He certainly acted in a suspicious manner.’’

Baltz does not make any specific accusations against McNally, though he says he reported McNally to the NFL "six or eight years ago" over McNally's early requests for the footballs and his behavior before and during games.

“For an officials’ locker room attendant, I always thought he was an unusual dude,’’ Baltz said. “Most locker room guys, they sit there and if you need something, they got it for you. When you left the locker room, you’d lock the door and they’d stay right there. The other 31 teams, that’s what they would do. That was his job.

“But McNally, he was running all around like a chicken with his head cut off. Asking for the balls early. What I specifically reported him for several years ago, and I thought this was really unusual, he’d run out on the field with the footballs before the game and the next thing you know, he’s playing pitch-and-catch with [Tom] Brady. Then, next thing, he’s on the sidelines right next to [Bill] Belichick, like he’s a [bleeping] assistant coach or something."

There is at least one problem with Baltz's story: according to reports, McNally became the locker room attendant in 2008, and worked only Patriots home games, and according to pro-football-reference.com, Baltz worked only four games in New England from 2008 until retiring in 2013. The Patriots were 2-2 in those games, including their divisional-round playoff loss to the New York Jets at the end of the 2010 season.

 

[realityball]

Until there's a trace of legitimate leadership in the NFL, gossip and finger-pointing will be the hot topics ... and as long as NE dominates, they will be the preliminary target for the attention seekers ... the infamous ESPN article last week illuded to the NFL using Deflategate as a "make-up" to their cover-up of spygate, making it the coup de grâce for ending any exoneration for the Patriot's so-called cheating since any would be seen as a cover-up ...

Patriots will be seen as cheaters for a generation or more to the casual fans ... that's that ... as far as the rest of the NFL, the only hope to slow down the bitchin and moanin would be for a more popular team or player to be burned at the stake for no reason ...

 

[BigKen]

If we Patriot fans have learned one thing over the past seven months, we've learned many.

We've learned that the NFL is as dishonest as they've led the rest of the country to believe that the Patriots are.
We've learned that pretty much 95% of NFL fans hate the Patriots.
We've learned that the NFL Officers believe themselves to be omnipotent.
We've learned that even after the facts come out, people refuse to accept them.
We've learned that the media will believe anything that they are told and will not confirm it before announcing, Tweeting or printing it.
We've learned that media types like Chris Mortensen will not retract or apologize even after he's proven 100% wrong.
We've learned that most of the NFL fans still think Tom Brady did something to the footballs before, during and after the AFC Championship Game. They believe he's guilty even though the Wells Report never charged him with anything. He was suspended for not cooperating with Ted Wells. That was proven to be wrong because Wells under oath said that he told Tom Brady he did not want or need his cell phone.

Most importantly, we've learned that jealousy is possibly the worst vice in sports. Everyone hates a winner except the winners because those that don't win..................are LOSERS.

 

[TxHeat]

The media is the biggest problem. Very few check facts any more. That used to be the number 1 rule before any good journalist put a story out. Now idiots like Mortensen and Kravitz just throw anything against the wall and report on it, regardless of the accuracy. Schefter is about the only one that seems to be accurate in what he reports, unlike most of the other fakes and bozos out there.