Media confuses 'more probable than not' with finding of fact in Tom Brady investigation

If you paid attention to the shrieking of the sports media over the past 24 hours, you might have the idea that a thorough investigation uncovered facts that proved Tom Brady of the New England Patriots was responsible for having footballs deflated in violation of NFL rules prior to January's AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts.

You'd especially have that idea if you read this piece of work by Chris Chase in USA Today, titled "Tom Brady cheated his way to a Super Bowl":

Despite the headlines that say the Patriots weren’t proved to be involved in wrongdoing in the long-awaited Wells Report, they were. Just because it was lower-level employees doesn’t make the Pats any less culpable. No, the report didn’t reveal some massive Watergate-style cover-up, but told us what we generally expected: Some assistant managers were messing around with the football, likely at the behest of Tom Brady. It’s not cause for a football death penalty, but it’s still cheating and shows the Pats haven’t learned a thing in the decade since their dalliance with illegal videotaping of teams. But there’s no apology coming from Kraft. He doesn’t know to leave things alone and criticized the report for not having any “hard evidence” that the Patriots were involved in the deflation of balls. But what does that mean — hard evidence? There’s not a videotape of it? The guys deflating the balls didn’t sit for an oil painting of them using a needle to get the balls to 11 PSI? It’s circumstantial evidence, hearsay and conjecture that Brady giving “the deflator,” the nickname the employee responsible for the deflation called himself, a pair of autographed footballs and signed a game-worn jersey that he had previously obtained was possible a thank you for getting those football to the illegal PSI which Brady preferred?

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Maybe that’s not enough to get a conviction in a court of law, but in a court of common sense it was always likely Tom Brady knew. It was ridiculous all along to believe that a man who spent so much time handling footballs couldn’t tell the difference between one under-inflated and one properly inflated. If Ted Williams used to know when his bats were off by a touch of an ounce, Brady knew this. So what kind of cheating was it? He’s not necessarily a guy who could cork his bat, just one who might add a little too much pine tar. It’s reasonable to assume Brady didn’t think it was cheating, just getting a little home-field cooking, the same way the Giants used to control the wind at The Meadowlands or Red Auerbach would crank up the heat at the Boston Garden. But nobody had to answer for that, while Brady stood up in front of media members after the AFC championship and basically laughed off any wrongdoing. Chase is awfully cavalier in his dismissal of Kraft's insistence on seeing real evidence. No one is confusing this with a court of law, but the reason you send a guy to do a thorough investigation is that you want him to come out of it with real facts. What he found was a bunch of texts between people not named Tom Brady, making cryptic references to Brady's dissatisfaction with the way the balls were inflated and presumably implying that they would get money from Brady if they deflated the balls. Is that an eyebrow-raiser? Sure. Something that warrants further investigation? You bet. But that further investigation would have to turn something up - perhaps an affidavit of someone copping to having deflated the balls at Brady's behest - before you could really say you've got the goods on him. This investigation turned up nothing of the sort. It produced enough smoke for the investigator to opine that it looked like there might be fire, but that is far from the factual finding of guilt that Chase and other media blowhards are trying to treat it as. It's also worth remembering: The Patriots beat the Colts 45-7. Do you really think deflated balls accounted for a 38-point swing in the score? And since this story was already circulating before the Super Bowl, you can be sure the NFL checked the inflation of footballs prior to the Super Bowl, and that didn't stop the Patriots from beating the Seahawks. That doesn't mean it's OK if the Patriot cheated, and I still don't know if they did or not. But the Wells Report sheds no light on the question at all. It provides a platform for Wells to give his opinion, and that's it. Patriots owner Bob Kraft is right to attack the tone and tenor of the report, as he does here:

I was convinced that Ted Wells’ investigation would find the same factual evidence supported by both scientific formula and independent research as we did and would ultimately exonerate the Patriots. Based on the explanations I have heard and the studies that have been done, I don’t know how the science of atmospheric conditions can be refuted or how conclusions to the contrary can be drawn without some definitive evidence. What is not highlighted in the text of the report is that three of the Colts’ four footballs measured by at least one official were under the required psi level. As far as we are aware, there is no comparable data available from any other game because, in the history of the NFL, psi levels of footballs have never been measured at halftime, in any climate. If they had been, based on what we now know, it is safe to assume that every cold-weather game was played with under inflated footballs. As compelling a case as the Wells Report may try to make, I am going to rely on the factual evidence of numerous scientists and engineers rather than inferences from circumstantial evidence. Throughout the process of this nearly four-month investigation, we have cooperated and patiently awaited its outcome. To say we are disappointed in its findings, which do not include any incontrovertible or hard evidence of deliberate deflation of footballs at the AFC Championship game, would be a gross understatement. In addition, given our level of cooperation throughout the process, I was offended by the comments made in the Wells Report in reference to not making an individual available for a follow-up interview. What the report fails to mention is that he had already been interviewed four times and we felt the fifth request for access was excessive for a part-time game day employee who has a full-time job with another employer.

What a crock. If this is what the NFL thinks passes for an investigation, we'll never know what really happened, but we sure don't have any solid reason to convict Tom Brady, Bill Belichick or anyone else. We can, however, convict the media for being stupid enough to treat such a shoddy report as some sort of authoritative finding of fact. I'd say they treat as fact whatever seems to confirm their preconceived notions. That's called confirmation bias, and it's very much at work here. That's their fault. It's not Tom Brady's. For what it's worth, I'm a Vikings fan, and I have no strong feelings one way or the other about the Patriots. Only about information being presented accurately, which this report is most definitely not.