After months in the national spotlight and weeks of deliberation by the league, the Deflategate mess seems no closer to a resolution today than ever before.
Commissioner Roger Goodell finally ruled on Tom Brady's appeal and the results were not good for Patriots fans. The league decided to uphold the four-game suspension, presumably meaning the quarterback will be forced to continue his fight in court.
So, the Patriots will enter training camp on Thursday with a starting quarterback who won't be eligible to play in the first four regular-season games of the 2015 season.
The league issued a comprehensive ruling, which included claims that Brady directed his assistant to destroy his cellphone on or around March 5, the day he met with Ted Wells. Goodell maintained that by destroying the cellphone Brady deliberately eliminated potentially relevant evidence, and by doing so went beyond a failure to cooperate in the investigation.
"On or shortly before March 6, the day that Tom Brady met with independent investigatorTed Wells and his colleagues, Brady directed that the cell phone he had used for the prior four months be destroyed. He did so even though he was aware that the investigators had requested access to text messages and other electronic information that had been stored on that phone," the statement read.
"During the four months that the cell phone was in use, Brady had exchanged nearly 10,000 text messages, none of which can now be retrieved from that device. The destruction of the cell phone was not disclosed until June 18, almost four months after the investigators had first sought electronic information from Brady."
You can read Goodell's entire findings by clicking here.
