Tom Brady’s Taking the NFL to Court, and Here’s Why He’ll Win

With the announcement on Tuesday that the NFL will uphold Tom Brady's four-game suspension for his role in the Deflategate scandal came some surprising new information for all of the Patriots fans who thought Brady would ultimately be vindicated and the fine would be erased.

Commissioner Roger Goodell issued his decision on Brady's appeal of his suspension (over a month after hearing the appeal) and stated that one of the major reasons is that Brady destroyed the cell phone he allegedly used to communicate with Jim McNally and especially John Jastremski in the wake of the Ted Wells investigation following the AFC Championship Game.

This was new information for the public in terms of how the investigation went down, which gives a lot more weight to the NFL's charge that Brady failed to cooperate with the investigation.

Why did Brady have his cell phone destroyed? From what he and his team told the NFL, it's his regular practice to get a new phone every four months or so and destroy the previous one. Makes sense if you're a celebrity, and I'm sure many of them do it, as their private numbers are probably leaked out frequently and it's the only way to keep your privacy.

But doesn't it seem too convenient that he had his phone, which he had been using since early in November of 2014--which means all through the scandal--destroyed the very same day or just before he met with Wells and his team? And that it also destroyed nearly 10,000 text messages that had been sent from that phone, which was confirmed by Brady's cell carrier?

And the most damning of it all--Brady and his people didn't reveal that information until June 18, four months after Wells asked for the phone.

So looking at all this information, it's hard to continue to shout from the rooftops, as so many have, that Brady had nothing to do with this. He probably, nay, likely directed McNally and Jastremski--either directly or indirectly--to have the balls at a certain PSI that was to his liking, and was probably below NFL-mandated minimums.

But here's the problem, if you're the NFL--Tom Brady was under no legal requirement to turn over his cell phone to the league or the league's investigators. Wells and Goodell made promises that they would keep all of the sensitive information on the phone private, but really, can Brady trust them to do so? And why would he even want anyone pawing through his phone (or pics of his supermodel wife) if it wasn't absolutely required by law?

The bottom line is that, guilty or not, the league asked Brady to do something with which he wasn't comfortable, and had no legal obligation to do. So for that he's being punished and tagged as "uncooperative."

I love working at WBSM, and I would never want to jeopardize it. But if station management ever asked to see my personal cell phone? I'd have a hard time wanting to cooperate with that request. And I don't even have anything to hide (except an embarrassingly low score in Words with Friends).

That's why Brady instructed the NFLPA to file in federal court. He's going to challenge the league on the legality of their investigation and its findings. It's not about whether or not he was "at least generally aware" of McNally and Jastremski's actions, or even if he outright ordered them to do it.

Yet the NFL and Goodell, in his self-righteous and all-important glory, can't understand why perhaps one of only a handful of players that could actually be considered bigger than the game won't just kowtow to their whims and desires.

And I've got a feeling that the federal court will eventually be explaining to them exactly why.

UPDATE: Here's the text of the NFLPA's release, in which they announce they will challenge Goodell's ruling in federal court on Brady's behalf:

NFLPA STATEMENT ON TOM BRADY'S FOUR-GAME SUSPENSION

The Commissioner's ruling today did nothing to address the legal deficiencies of due process. The NFL remains stuck with the following facts:

• The NFL had no policy that applied to players;
• The NFL provided no notice of any such policy or potential discipline to players;
• The NFL resorted to a nebulous standard of "general awareness" to predicate a legally unjustified punishment;
• The NFL had no procedures in place until two days ago to test air pressure in footballs; and
• The NFL violated the plain meaning of the collective bargaining agreement.

The fact that the NFL would resort to basing a suspension on a smoke screen of irrelevant text messages instead of admitting that they have all of the phone records they asked for is a new low, even for them, but it does nothing to correct their errors.

The NFLPA will appeal this outrageous decision on behalf of Tom Brady.

-- NFL Players Association