There are pluses to the ball controversy.
  • David Lee/Shutterstock
  • There are pluses to the ball controversy.

Remember how I warned you that the Patriots are next-level insufferable and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick would do anything to ensure the Seahawks would not become a dynasty? Well, part of that plan apparently involved making the Super Bowl with the aid of illegally deflated balls.

Illegally deflated balls.

One more time:

Illegally deflated balls.

What does this mean?

The less well-inflated a ball is, the easier it is to grip and catch. Now, quarterbacks like their balls inflated different ways, and there’s a legal range that balls are allowed to be in. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is one of the few who likes his balls overinflated. Eli Mannings like to work on his own balls.

But at the AFC Championship game, the Patriots had almost exclusively illegally deflated balls. To be clear, each team has their own balls, and they’re all checked before the game. Also, people who know physics are saying that the cold of Boston would not have been enough to produce balls this deflated. So something illegal happened here.

Illegally deflated balls.

I couldn’t be happier about this. Now, I don’t think the NFL will suspend Belichick or quarterback Tom Brady, or go even further and flip the result of the Patriots game. It didn't win them the AFC Championship game; they were way better than the Colts.

That said, there are still tons of pluses. It lets the national media swirl around the Patriots while the Seahawks get to prepare in relative peace. Also, it make the average neutral fan immediately come to our side. Expect Arizona to be full of de facto 12s, which means the crowd noise will be overinflated. Plus we get weeks of ball talk. So much ball talk.

But I can’t tell if this is, big picture, good or bad for the Seahawks.

On the one hand, the NFL now wants no part of the Patriots beating us, and it’s possible we could get a Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl XL-style amount of home cooking from the refs. That would be great. The flip side is that we’re in the midst of the worst year in NFL history. The perfect (read: goddamn worst) ending would be a tainted Patriots Super Bowl win when the NFL failed to throw the game for the Seahawks.

This game was already going to be a pain in the ass to analyze because the teams are very well-matched and highly unique in terms of how they execute. Now throw in three or four levels of paranoia and intrigue? I have no idea.

Oh wait, I do have an idea: The Seahawks are still gonna win this thing because of…