CtA book updates

Versions dated prior to 11/27/2017 suggested that the 10.1 psi claim in “the Crime Begins” was a fabrication, rather than actual witness testimony.  The correction: The hearsay witness claim of 10.1, coupled with the declining pressures of the lowest-pressured 3 footballs, suggests that the 10.1 was real, and that all the footballs were taken out of the bag immediately at the start of half time, and that the lowest-pressured ball had about 3x more volume increase than what Exponent simulated.  It’s ironic that the NFL claimed that recollection of 10.1 psi was wrong.  At first blush one would think would have strengthened their case.  The NFL had to disavow the 10.1 claim in order to perpetuate the false impression that nobody measured the footballs when they were fresh off of the field but failed to write those numbers down.  Testimony of those measurements on the other footballs would have shown that when measured fully cold, the Colts balls had lost as much pressure as most Patriots footballs.

New discussion is added to “What they Knew” to explain the pressure using more data and to show that the investigators were still knew that there wasn’t cheating because at least nine of 12 balls had the same pressure loss as the Colts footballs:

“Maybe the three lowest pressured footballs confused them, Lieutenant.  You claimed that those stayed in the bag and weren’t tested at first.  You tried to explain away the downward trend in pressure of those three balls that you said stayed in the bag by claiming that the balls tested later were deeper in the bag.  Now I’ll use your data against you, Lieutenant.  By your logic, the drop in pressure of those three footballs suggests that they had been out of the bag long enough to get warmer than the bag, so the bag could then cool them when they went back into the bag.  So they must have had much lower pressures when they were cold.”

“You have only three points to support your trend line theory, sir.  That’s not enough.”

“We also have Mr. Gardi’s claim that someone told him that a football measured as low as 10.1 psi, Lieutenant.[1]  We dismissed his testimony as wrong, but your data shows that he was probably right.  Apparently the ball that measured 10.50 on the lower gauge at about the eight minute mark at half time read only 10.1 before the ball warmed up.  That gives you two problems: first you have to explain that 10.1 pressure, second, you can’t prove that our folks thought the difference between the Patriots and the Colts was only 0.50 psi.”

“Okay, sir.  The real pressure would have been closer to 10.2 if that 10.1 measurement had, like the 10.50 measurement, used the under-reading personality of the gauge.  Perhaps the gauge really said 10.15 and someone rounded that down to 10.1.  That would put the real pressure closer to 10.25.  The gas law at constant volume predicted a loss of 1.37 psi.  The ball started at 12.17 psi at just over 72 degrees, and ended at about 45 degrees with 10.80 psi before accounting for leather expansion.  So we need the volume expansion to cause a net of about 0.55 or 0.60 psi of additional pressure drop.

Independent tests showed that when ‘footballs were dampened to replicate the rainy conditions … the ball dropped an additional 0.7 PSI.’[2]  Your spray-and-wipe lab test showed only 0.18 psi of total moisture impact, but how does that compare to the game?  You omitted your individual ball data from the simulations where you tried to replicate the game action.  You’d have shared the data if it helped your case, sir, so we can surmise that it helped the Patriots.  Fortunately, we can check the game-day results against your lab tests.

They swap out the balls during timeouts.  The interception was two plays after a timeout.  The actual pressure for the intercepted ball used in two plays matched your lab-bench test results.  So your lab-bench test matched real footballs that had been used for only two plays.

Your report said ‘the game telecast was used to guide how much playing time each team’s footballs experienced, and the balls were rotated in and out of “play” accordingly,’ which I thought meant that the balls were rotated after each play.  Now I know better: with 11:11 to play in the first quarter, the telecast showed the referee only partially, casually, and lightly applying a towel, and not swapping out the ball.  There were other examples too.  The ball that was taken from play during that timeout before the interception appeared to have been used 7 plays in a row after the first ball of the drive was likely swapped out after landing incomplete along the Patriots sideline.  The first ball in the Patriots’ final drive appeared to be used six plays in a row.  So that’s about three times the moisture exposure compared to the intercepted ball – and the game-day data agrees with three times the resulting pressure loss due to the leather stretching compared to the intercepted ball.  Most of the balls saw one or two plays, a couple saw 3.  That explains why the other balls matched your lab data.

The Colts balls had similar issues.  The 12 Colts balls had been used 37 times, an average of 3.1 times per ball.  The 11 Patriots footballs taken in at half time had been used 38 times, an average of 3.5 times per ball.  Besides, nobody thinks the Patriots would deflate only 3 balls.

It’s ironic that you hid the lowest, most suspicious looking pressure, 10.1 psi.  You had to: if you revealed it, you’d be confirming that you had witness accounts of what the ball pressures where when all the balls were cold.  Those witnesses would have ruined your case.  That’s why you refused Brady’s lawyers’ request to question Gardi about his recollections.  The lie wasn’t the 10.1 psi; the lies were pretending to disbelieve the 10.1 psi, and that the Colts balls were fine.”

[1] Wells p. 101

[2] Thanks to Ben Taylor for http://www.backpicks.com/deflate-gate-science-wiki/#Environment, which links to the independent test report showing 0.6 to 0.9 psi drop

Versions dated prior to 11/14/2017 had a miswritten heading in “What are the Odds”  The corrected heading is: Perhaps the Colts’ gauge over-reads when the pressure is low but not when the pressure is high?

 

Versions printed prior to 10/31 misidentified a picture, thus incorrectly positing that Jastremski had a weight problem.  While searching for pictures of Jastresmki, I came across the text messages that were omitted from the Wells report, relating to inappropriate pictures, that were the most plausible line of discussion that prompted the “going to ESPN” comment, rather than use of the moniker “deflator.”  The new versions apply that corrected information to further reduce the idea that the ESPN comment was only plausibly about a conspiracy to deflate footballs.

The new version also lists a few minor examples of perjury, and more succinctly puts the perjury issue: “Accidentally claiming that which you intended to only falsely imply is perjury.”

Below is the revised content about the conspiracy claims regarding the “deflator” nickname and the “going to ESPN” comment, followed by the additional examples of perjury

12. The deflator?
“Okay, sir, now is a good time to take a look. The infamous text message from back in May in the previous off season says ‘Nice dude….jimmy [meaning himself, Jim McNally] needs some kicks….lets make a deal…..come on help the deflator.’ Doesn’t McNally ever think of anything besides sneakers? Did you ever ask yourself why, sir? I think we can see why. When the team got back together in May, McNally was still upset that he missed out on the Uggs that past holiday season.”

“Either way, he’s the deflator, Lieutenant. What else could that possibly mean?”

“Well, sir, my theory is that he called himself the deflator because he was trying to lose weight. If you google for pictures of Jim McNally, you’ll see that he has a weight problem. There’s even texting evidence to support that he uses the word deflate that way. The following November, Jastremski is on the sidelines out in Green Bay where the Patriots are playing the Packers. McNally is not in Green Bay but rather watching on TV. McNally texts to Jastremski, ‘Deflate and give somebody that jkt.’
Jastremski is not the guy who is accused of deflating footballs. Nobody was accused of deflating balls on the sideline on national TV. McNally was asking for clothing like that hooded sweatshirt you mentioned earlier. It seems that was McNally’s way of saying ‘lose some weight and then give me your jacket and get a new one from the team for yourself. Weight loss is the only interpretation of “deflate” that ties together with giving up a jacket.’”

“How about this, Lieutenant? I say he hid a needle in his jacket, so he was supposed to hurry up and deflate the footballs so he could finally take off his jacket.”

“You don’t need a jacket to hide a needle or use one. A pocket and the bag would be fine for that. It would also be impossible to deflate each ball by the same amount, and to deflate each ball the same number of times, to keep them consistent, while keeping the balls in a bag on national TV. And, McNally didn’t say to take the jacket off, he said to give it to someone.”

“The Patriots once claimed that Jastremski was thin and was trying to bulk up. Therefore, McNally wasn’t talking about weight loss; he was telling Jastremski to deflate the footballs, so then he could give his jacket to someone temporarily for safe keeping.”

“I was known for being thin, sir, but I noticed that pictures didn’t seem to reflect that lately. It turns out that the camera did not lie. I needed to lose about 12 pounds to not have extra weight. During the year that it took me to do that, it was a constant struggle to learn to count calories and go hungry enough. It’s an ongoing effort, especially during the holidays. My being thin does not preclude my trying to deflate myself. I’m thin only because I deflate from time to time, especially after the holidays.”

“I’m not buying it, Lieutenant.”

“Let me get this straight, sir. While the game is going on in Green Bay, the Patriots weren’t bothering to deflate footballs, until part-time helper Jim McNally, watching the game on TV from home in New England, suddenly commands the full-time equipment manager to deflate the footballs on national TV in conjunction with giving away his jacket so he can stand around the rest of the evening in November in Green Bay, Wisconsin without a jacket?”

13. Threat to go to ESPN?
“You’re missing the best part, Lieutenant. A few minutes later McNally texts ‘Chill buddy im [sic] just fuckin with you ….im [sic] not going to espn. [sic]…….yet.’ The only conclusion that makes any sense is that he was threatening to tell ESPN about deflating footballs.”

“That’s what you wanted the public to believe, but that’s not what you believed, sir. You had additional text messages from that conversation that you omitted from the report. Here is what I found that you omitted, ending with the four messages you put in the report:

12:21:46: JM “Whats up dorito dink”
12:22:53: JJ “Nada”
12:22:53: JM “Whens the pong party….im on fire”
12:23:10: JJ “Omg”
12:23:34: JM “Bring it”
16:29:48: JM “You still with your women”
16:29:59: JJ “Yup”
16:33:21: JM “You must have her [omitted out of respect to Mrs. Jastremski]”
16:34:39: JM “You must have a picture of her [omitted out of respect to Mrs. Jastremski]”
16:36:31: JJ “Omg”
16:37:16: JM “You working”
16:37:53 JJ “Yup”
16:39:40 JM “Nice dude…jimmy needs some kicks….lets make a deal…come on help the deflator”
16:47:15 JM “Chill buddy im just f****n with you….im not going to espn….yet”

For one thing, sir, we can see that Jastremski, JJ, uses the term ‘omg’ for just about anything. He used it to respond to a question about a pong party. By hiding how frequently and casually Jastremski over-uses the term ‘omg,’ you let the public over-react to Jastremski’s use of the term ‘omg’ in all those other messages.

McNally frequently engages in hyperbole – like threatening to turn the football into a beach ball or a watermelon. Given McNally’s pattern of hyperbole, it’s unlikely that McNally meant literally ‘going to ESPN.’ When people use the expression ‘make a federal case out of it,’ they don’t literally mean filing suit in federal court.

There’s no evidence that Jastremski ever reacted to the come-help-the-deflator text. The last thing that Jastremski reacted to, other than the question of whether he was working, was some crude talk about compromising pictures about someone – pictures that Jastremski’s wife would not want to hear about. If there’s blackmail, even pretend, joking blackmail, it’s about women and something Jastremski would not want his wife to know, even if that something was just locker room banter. It wasn’t even slight blackmail because Jastremski took months to give anything to McNally, and only did so out of pity for McNally’s not getting anything like other folks get. By far the most plausible explanation for McNally’s last message was that he realized he’d stepped over the line a bit with his comments, although he couldn’t resist razzing Jastremski anew by ending the message with ‘yet.’”

“I disagree, Lieutenant. I say there was some interaction that isn’t in the text message, about how upset Jastremski was about McNally calling himself the deflator.”

“Your theory is nonsense, sir. If McNally was a long-time deflator as you allege, with Jastremski being in charge of coordinating McNally’s cheating as you allege, then there was nothing new to ‘react’ to in the text message. The topic was inappropriate banter.”

“I disagree, Lieutenant. Jastremski objected to the new nick name of ‘the deflator.’”

“If so, sir, there’s nothing wrong with that concern. This is Massachusetts, home to the Salem witch trials. Two of my ancestors were executed for being witches. Appearances are important. There was another witch hunt in 1985 that sent a man to jail for nearly 20 years in part for working at his Mom’s daycare center while going by the nickname ‘Tooky.’”

“None of your theories sound as plausible as mine, Lieutenant.”

Additional examples of perjury:

Other false statements by Caligiuri, which work together as part of the crucial deception about the purpose of the tests conducted by Exponent:

“Those were experiments that we tried to simulate the entire game day”. [Appeal transcript “page” 358.] In reality, they knowingly simulated events differently from the information they had about game day. Their report even used the word “namely” in a clever way to create the impression of attempting to simulate actual events while actually making no such claim. They did not simulate the use of the bag to match the available testimony contained in their report.

‘We looked at the range of temperature in the pre-game shower room. We actually measured it to be between 67 and 71, 72 degrees. That’s why in all of our experiments, we looked at that as a potential range.’ [‘page’ 365]. That is also untrue: they knew 67 was physically impossible on game day, because it was too warm out for any part of the room to be that cold on game day.

“We went out and collected all the gauges we could find.” Actually, they knew they could find Logo gauges – just ask teams, high schools, universities.

Wells knew that the reason he gave for disbelieving the referee’s testimony was not his actual reasoning. The actual reasoning was to frame the Patriots. Wells’ team knew that the Patriots and Colts gauges had confirmed the referee’s testimony. That’s why the report had to delete what Mr. Riveron did in the dressing area, to hide what the NFL knew.