The fucking 49'ers won 3 rings with Rice admittedly using stick'um during that run. I don't see anyone calling for those rings to be taken back or an asterisk put into the record books. I don't see anyone calling for the Broncos to give back the rings after they were caught skirting the cap when they won the Superbowl.
Did the Pats deflate those balls, most likely. I personally think they did, there is too much evidence to deny it. But even during the investigations I was
reading about other QB's fucking with the balls and another
long time QB even talk about deflating the balls and saying it was common practice.
Teams pipe in fake noise and constantly disrupt headset communications. Teams used to fuck with the balls that the opponent teams were using before each team used their own balls.
I see proof of cheating everywhere in the league, you can't deny it. Cheating has always happened and will always happen, every team right now has PED laced super humans, but the league and people don't care as long as you keep face and pretend it's not happening.
Seriously, it's like baseball. Everyone was doping, nobody cared because for a long time people weren't testing positive, then the cat was out of the bag and the illusion was broken. Every pitcher is using some type of illegal grip stashed either on their glove or in their asshole, nobody cares as long as you pretend it's not happening and try to keep it discrete.
Spy gate caused an insane media shitstorm because most of the information that was initially used was hyperbolic in nature. The Patriots broke the rules because they were stealing signals from a non sanctioned position. That's it, that's all it was. Before 2006 it was legal to go where ever the fuck you wanted to steal signals.
And guess who ratted them out for doing something that was still legal, but just doing it in the wrong spot, the Jets. The Jets were doing it too, but the Jets caught the Pats and created one of the biggest non issues ever in the NFL. Even to this day false information about the Pats taping the Rams practice is thrown around as proof, just showing how much stupid mis-informed garbage came out of the coverage of this event. Or my favorite "THEY BURNED DA TAPES", even though media members saw all the evidence during the press debriefing.
And all of that stupid shit has created the notion that the Pats are "perpetual cheaters", that everything they do is completely tarnished and the leagues integrity is damaged solely from the Patriots actions.
But nope, the Patriots are literally destroying the integrity of the NFL and tarnished it for the past 15 years.