I interviewed Paul Greenberg, who works at Analysis Group and has a son at the high school, about his role as an analyst in one of the proceedings over the summer that determined what the outcome of Deflategate would be. Greenberg and his company worked along with expert witness Ted Snyder, Dean of Yale University’s School of Management, to examine the validity of one section of the Wells report, called the “Exponent report” in order to prepare Snyder for his role as an expert witness for the NFL Players’ Association in the appeal hearing on June 23rd. The “Exponent report” was a series of experiments and statistical analysis done by an Engineering and Scientific Consulting firm named, you guessed it, Exponent.
“In advance of [the hearing] of course,” Greenberg said. “We reviewed carefully the Wells report, and we basically replicated what was in there from a statistical perspective, and we analyzed what was perhaps not quite right about it.”
The Wells report states that based on Exponent’s extensive testing, the “absence of a credible scientific explanation for the Patriots halftime measurements tends to support a finding that human intervention may account for the additional loss of pressure exhibited by the Patriots balls.”
Sounds like a pretty rock solid conclusion, especially if you read about the testing that Exponent did. According to the Wells report they repeated the game measurement, simulating the conditions of the game and the officials’ locker room where the balls were gauged. They tested the gauges that were used to measure the balls and basically crossed every statistical and scientific bridge there is to cross.
Except for one. Time.
“We said, ‘ok we get all that you’ve done,” Greenberg said. “But you’ve ignored one very key fact, which is that the Patriots balls were measured at halftime before the Colts balls were measured.’”
Why does this matter? Who cares?
Science does, because Exponent used the Colts balls as controls when they reported their findings. This is not reliable when the balls are taken from a cold and wet environment at Gillette Stadium into a room temperature locker room. Simple science says so.
“When you take them outside they get deflated, they get depressurized,” Greenberg said. “When you bring them back inside at halftime, the longer they stay inside, the more pressure comes back, if you measured the Patriots footballs first and the Colts footballs next, you’re necessarily allowing the Colts balls to stay indoors longer and therefore they have a chance to rise in pressure more than the Patriots balls did. Or, more pointedly, it really gets at the point that although the Colts balls were used as controls, they’re not good controls if you don’t control for that difference, that timing difference.”
Beyond that unaccounted for timing difference, only four Colts balls were measured to be used as controls, while 11 Patriots balls were measured.
“What if instead you hypothetically said, “Let’s pull them back in time, and measure them at the exact same time as the Patriots balls, by how much would the pressure have fallen for the Colts balls, relative to the Patriots. Low and behold, when you do that, there’s no longer any statistical difference between the two measures. So what Exponent said was a statistically significant difference that could only be explained by human intervention, we said there’s no statistical difference at all, when you properly account for that fact,” Greenberg said.
So, now that there is no statistical difference in the pressure change from the Patriots AFC Championship balls to the Colts ones, there should be no basis for an investigation. Because that points to the fact that the balls could not have possibly been deflated by the Patriots equipment managers. If they were, there would have been a drop in PSI statistically significant enough to hint at such a crime.
So, based on this new knowledge, any reasonable, unbiased arbitrator should probably consider clearing Tom Brady and the Patriots organization of any wrongdoing, or at least not just plainly dismiss these legitimate statistical findings. At least in my opinion, that would be the case.
Commissioner Roger Goodell did not follow that path. He instead continued to wage a media heavy legal war against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, one that did not end until late August, when Judge Richard M. Berman overturned Brady’s four game suspension.
Although this is only one part of the Deflategate saga, it is one that appears to be significant enough to tip the scales and affect the outcome of such a case. The fact that this decision by Goodell comes on the heels of a few other recent controversial decisions by his office only strengthens the legitimacy of his critics.
Goodell presides over the American professional football, one of the largest and most lucrative industries in our country. I am not going to say that Goodell should resign or be fired, I just would like to simply say that I wish he had not used up millions of dollars and a couple months of time to attempt to make a political statement against the New England Patriots, telling the world that he is more powerful than the Patriots. Everybody already knew that.
So what does Greenberg make of all of this? After all he was in the room listening to the appeal proceedings for ten hours on June 23rd. He was much closer to the situation than I was.
“This was an excuse, a venue to argue over political interests,” Greenberg said.
It is concerning that this argument over political interests wasted so many resources and took up such a large portion of so many people’s lives while monopolizing the news cycle. Goodell should focus on the many other problems the NFL has instead of the pressure of footballs during a 38-point drubbing of the Colts by the Patriots.
