A Meditation on Crime and Punishment in Relation to Tom Brady’s Balls

Monday was yesterday, and brought with it important news in the realm of poorly inflated balls:

Tom Brady will not be permitted to play four football games next year.

For some people, this lack of footballing permission would be a gift. Such people include those who are weak or injured or just have no interest in playing a football game. That’s most people! For football player Tom Brady (I should probably have already mentioned he is a football player), a man who likely has his sense of self bound to his participation in football games, this is a punishment.

Punishments are about blame.

In this case, Tom Brady is receiving blame from a man (who? Doesn’t matter for our purposes, but for the sake of thoroughness, the blaming-man’s name is Roger) in the form of not being allowed to play football.

Should he be?

I’d prefer that we not assume that Tom Brady should be blamed thusly. Why? Self-identifying football player Tom Brady is attractive, and I am loathe to blame an attractive person for anything. Also, all people regardless of their physical traits are inherently fallible. Blaming fallible people (read: any people) for wrongdoing often feels like piling on to their inherent frailty (read: the human condition).

So let’s not talk yet about blaming Tom Brady. Let’s instead talk about balls.

Footballs are full of air. The outside of a football is made out of leather or synthetic materials or pigskin. One of the three, probably. But the inside of a football is air.

Quickly, let’s back up… many balls are full of air. Balls, etymologically, come from the Greek word “ball” meaning full of air (probably, I’m not looking this up). Some balls are not full of air (baseballs, for one, are not full of air), but let’s exclude those for the purposes of this discussion about ball blaming because this is about air-filled balls, and more specifically air-filled footballs.

(Okay, guys, I lied to you earlier. I’m human and therefore fallible. I did look up “ball,” and it doesn’t come from the Greek word “ball” (that isn’t a Greek word) or the Greek word “baleen,” which means “to throw,” (which is a Greek word, but not a relevant one in this case). Instead the word “ball” comes from the Norse word “bǫllr,” meaning a solid or hollow sphere. Footballs are not spheres. They are hollow. I do not know what to make of this.)

Now that we’ve backed up and learned about balls and lies, let’s move forward. Because the exterior of a football is soft, how hard a football feels when kicked or gripped is dependent on how much air is in the ball. This is because of gravity in a very broad sense, probably. (I don’t know if you’ve touched leather or pigskin or synthetic materials, but the first two are almost always soft to the touch. As for synthetic materials, they sometimes are hard and sometimes are soft, but in this case the materials that are maybe in question are soft.)

Gravity is a law.

So blame not Tom Brady for his absence from football! Blame the law of gravity for Brady’s taste in illegally soft balls. (I should probably have said earlier that liking illegally soft balls is why Brady won’t be allowed to play those four football games next year. So blame me if you’re confused right now). Or blame other laws, either for your confusion or for Brady’s suspension. Laws would probably be a more useful outlet for your blame than me or gravity, if you’re inclined to blame anything.

What laws can you blame?

There are laws related to the hardness of balls, laws that govern NFL games. They sit among the laws of man (that man’s name, again, is Roger). There are local and federal statutes unrelated to balls, but nonetheless present in the word, dictating the shape of our actions in ways both unconscious and conscious. Also there’s maritime law—always a tricky subject. Laws, laws, laws.

Ball laws.

Blame ball laws.

Or embrace them.

Or don’t, and blame Brady. He threw balls that contributed to the Seahawks losing a Super Bowl. You can blame him. And revel in his not playing football as many times as he would prefer. Revel in his coming identity crisis. It will come.

Honestly though, and if I’m being honest, I don’t care what you do.

Wait… That’s a lie, too.

I care that you watch this Vine of Tom Brady talking about balls:

Good. Thank you for doing that. In conclusion, bǫllr also means testicle in Olde Norse.