This post by Barry Petchesky gets a rare link from me to a *Deadspin* article:
> Despite the Patriots schadenfreude (the last pure sports emotion), the punishment is a fucked-up overreaction from a league hyperdesperate to protect its image—it’s no accident that the NFL cited “conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football.”
> The league threw the book at the Patriots for the worst and most absurd reasons. Two specifically named in the statement announcing the discipline was Brady’s and the team’s failure to self-incriminate, as if any employee should ever cooperate with an investigation ofhimself; and the fact that the Patriots are considered repeat offenders for something that happened eight years ago, even though the NFL went out of its way to make clear that Ballghazi didn’t extend to the echelons of the organization that would have been involved with Spygate.
Pretty much sums it up.