If it turns out that the Patriots did, in fact, tamper with the footballs that were used during the AFC Championship Game on Sunday by deflating them, they won't be the first team to tamper with game balls in the days leading up to a big game. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the Buccaneers did it as well right before their Super Bowl XXXVII game against the Raiders.
In fairness to the Bucs, their entire organization wasn't in on it. But a few years ago during a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Bucs' Super Bowl win, former Tampa Bay quarterback Brad Johnson revealed that, right before that Super Bowl, he paid NFL employees $7500 to scuff up all 100 footballs that had been set aside for the game. It seems Johnson struggled to grip new footballs that hadn't been used before. So he convinced the employees to tamper with them so that he'd be able to grip them easily once the Super Bowl started.
"I paid some guys off to get the balls right," he told the Tampa Bay Times. "I went and got all 100 footballs, and they took care of all of them."
The difference between what the Patriots allegedly did and what Johnson did is that both the Buccaneers and the Raiders gained an advantage when Johnson paid to have the new footballs scuffed up, while the Patriots were the only ones who would have gained an advantage from their deflated footballs. But it's still pretty amazing to hear a former NFL quarterback talking about handing NFL employees money in order to have footballs altered before the biggest game of the 2002-03 NFL season. And it'll be interesting to hear how the NFL responds to all of this now that they know that guys like Johnson and even Aaron Rodgers have asked for footballs to be tampered with prior to games in the past.
[via Pro Football Talk]
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