Obama on Deflategate: Patriots would have won 'regardless'

President Obama weighed in on the Patriots' Deflategate controversy in an interview Sunday, saying the Patriots would have beat the Colts in the AFC title game 'no matter what the balls looked like.' Mr. Obama also refused to side with either the Patriots or the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. 

|
Carolyn Kaster/AP/File
President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington. The president gave his thoughts on Deflategate in a pre-Super Bowl interview Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015.

At long last, the leader of the free world has weighed in on Deflategate. His reaction?  A big shrug, more or less.

"Here's what I know: the Patriots were going to beat the Colts regardless of what the footballs looked like," Mr. Obama said, referring to whether or not the New England Patriots intentionally deflated footballs to make them easier to throw.

The president’s comments came in a pre-game interview on NBC with “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie. Obama also spoke on the economy, answered questions about getting his agenda through an uncooperative Congress, and played rapid-fire round of “either/or” with Guthrie (he prefers basketball over football, offense over defense, and chips and guacamole over Buffalo wings).

What surprised him, the president went on to say, was the fact that teams are in charge of their own footballs at all. "I'm assuming one of the things the NFL is going to be doing just to avoid any of these controversies is figuring out how the officials are in charge of the footballs from start to finish," he said.

But Ms. Guthrie pressed him.  Was it cheating if the Patriots under-inflated the footballs? 

"If you break the rules, then you break the rules," he replied 

Obama was also mum on who he was rooting for during the game, or which team he thought would prevail, saying he wouldn’t want to alienate a major city by picking a side.

Obama’s favorite team, the Chicago Bears, didn’t get anywhere near Glendale this year, but the team will play a big part in the Super Bowl thanks to Deflategate: The Bears’ equipment manager is in charge of both teams’ game balls, arranging them for the Patriots’ and Seahawks’ ball boy crews. The NFL says the practice of hiring a third-party equipment manager for the Super Bowl is typical.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Obama on Deflategate: Patriots would have won 'regardless'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Sports/2015/0201/Obama-on-Deflategate-Patriots-would-have-won-regardless
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe