The Golden Boy

As an Iggles phan I really want to hate Tom Brady.  He beat us in the only Superbowl we have made in the past thirty years.  I am perfectly willing to believe that he would cheat to win, even by doing something as picayune as taking some air out of the ball.
But - and this really does pain me to say - I'm glad he won his suit against the NFL.  I'm glad the judge decided that the NFL overstepped and acted improperly, and basically made Roger Goodell wear the cone of shame.  It's not that I find Goodell personally problematic, but I have observed that the NFL is becoming a bit of a monstrosity, and this little thing kicks that monster in the shins just a bit.
See, the NFL is an organization that enjoys tax exempt status, while the owners of teams who comprise it are really rich and keep getting richer.  Instead of contributing to the public good by paying taxes, like you me and everyone we know, they just get to keep the change, they make a profit, in some cases heaps of it.  They are not churches (even though football is a religion in this country), they are not non-profit organizations or an educational institution, but they don't pay taxes.  The logic behind this is, I suppose, they provide a public service in entertaining people and stimulating the economy of the city where they play.  Those in government have a vested interest in keeping them around and keeping them happy. There is probably a correlation between re-election rates and NFL franchise success (just a guess, some stat people check that out for me).
But the NFL is not a scrappy little conglomeration of guys in leather helmets any more, they are freaking huge and have demonstrated rather callous corporate behavior, most tragically in the way they have slow played the effect that concussions have had on their players, but also in their approach to discipline of their players.  Football players have made headlines for all different sorts of maladjusted behavior: domestic violence, DUI, drug use, murder, attempted murder, lying, cheating and stealing.  It's to the point where if it's not a felony it barely even gets mentioned.  The problem is that the NFL only seems to care when it's a public relations issue.  When Ray Rice punched out his fiancee in an elevator, on camera, the NFL issued a six game suspension when we saw the tape of him dragging his unconscious girlfriend out of the elevator.  Ray admitted he was the cause of her unconsciousness, via his fist hitting her in the face.  Yep, six game suspension, bad boy!
No problem so far, punching women out is definitely in the realm of behaviors that society and organizations within society ought to say is a big no-no.  However, when the video of said incident, all the way through surfaces, and shows exactly the action that Ray Rice had already confessed and apologized for, now the suspension goes boom to a possible lifetime ban (which was later moderated to a season).  Why? Bad PR.  Not moral outrage on the part of the League, not legal liability, not anything that had any basis in the facts of the case, but just because it looked so much worse on film, in slow motion, replayed over and over again, so that people could get a real good look at a man making a really bad decision.
Ray Rice was a running back who was definitely on the down side of his career, he was not at all a sympathetic character because he punched a woman in the face.  He really had no grounds to do anything more than say, "hey that's not really fair."
Tom Brady on the other hand, just won the Super Bowl.  Tom Brady is pretty and articulate and married to a super model, and has super hair and a winning smile, and has won since he basically appeared out of nowhere, and is called the golden boy.  He is the guy you really want to hate, but you also kind of want him on your team.  He has also just demonstrated how people who are privileged can use their privilege to benefit the community.
When the NFL sicced their pack of lawyers on Brady, and they generated a million dollar report that turns out not to be worth the paper it was printed on, which basically says that Brady, or someone may or may not have cheated, and Brady or someone may or may not have known (call me the next time you want to pay someone to write 50 pages without saying anything), Emperor Goodell imposed a 4 game suspension, incidentally the same amount that Greg Hardy was suspended for trying to kill a woman and then either terrorizing or paying her not to testify.
Tom Brady is arguably the face of the NFL, and has been for over a decade.  He is not a hulking linebacker who can barely grunt more than a syllable, and he is not accused of some heinous act of violence, or even something really shameful.  In fact, what he is accused of could very well not be anything at all, depending on who you talk to, but that's not even the point, the point is he had a chance to stand up to perhaps the only thing that would have the audacity to try and bully Tom Brady, the National Football League.
Honestly it would take a confrontation with such a monopolistic, heavy handed corporate entity to make Brady seem like an underdog, but there he is, and he gonna fight.  And he gonna win round one.  Oh yes, there will be appeals, but it is unlikely that the facts of the case are going to change.
The thing is, he didn't have to go through all of this, he could have just taken the four games and then come back to lead the Patriots into the playoffs, again.  He could have mumbled an insincere apology, not really admitted anything and taken a reduced suspension and been back even sooner, but that would have left the next dude who gets railroaded by the Goodell public relations/discipline machine with less of a leg to stand on.  Maybe the next dude is a special teams guy who needs to launch himself like a human torpedo just to bring home another game check, maybe nobody notices that that guy is getting the shaft.  The NFL's methods and judgments have now been firmly brought under suspicion.
I can't really say that I'm now a Tom Brady fan, and he may have had no other motivation in this than pride and trying to win another game, but he has taken on Goliath and won, and I guess I'm fond of when that happens.