Super Farce XLIX, The Cheats: It's Not What They Tell You, It's What They Don't Tell You

Well, the NFL tried to deflate DeflateGate, at least for the Super Bowl itself, by explaining how the footballs for the game will be dealt with.

After the Cheats and Thugs won their games, Wilson (the company who makes the footballs) ships each team 54 game balls for them to work with during the practices, which the quarterbacks can, within the normal league parameters, tweak.

That's all fine.

Then, yesterday, the balls were taken to the equipment manager of the Chicago Bears (selected by the league, again normal policy, for this purpose), who inspects the 108 balls, throws out any obvious problems, and sends the rest of the balls to NFL Security, who locks them up.

Today, sports authenticators will stamp the balls under the watchful eye of NFL Security in a locked room, where the balls will be kept until game day, and they won't be in the stadium until about three hours before the game.  (The balls are auctioned off by the NFL.)

This is all, basically, Standard Operating Procedure.

What they WON'T tell us is where the balls will be and under whose custody during the game.

Why do I say this, and why is that question important?

Because the needles needed for this process are so small, they can be palmed and hidden, and not even the cameras might be able to pick them up, if the person using them knows what they are doing.

I had a friend of mine show me one of those needles, and how easily they can be palmed.

So, until I know who and what has the balls during the game, I can't ensure that, similar to possible other games, that the ballboy for the Cheats would go "One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi..." with his hand over one ball, and then go to the next.

Yeah, he'd have 54 to do instead of the smaller number, but...

"This is not Detroit, man!  This is the Super Bowl!!" -- Paul Allen