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Why Brandon Marshall Is Dead Wrong About Race's Role In DeflateGate

BOSTON (CBS) -- I like Brandon Marshall. I like his opinions. I like that, in a culture where athletes tend to speak without ever saying anything, he's willing to share his opinions. I very much enjoyed the episode of "A Football Life" that focused on Marshall and how open he's been about borderline personality disorder, as well as the work he's done to raise awareness.

So nothing written here is to say that Brandon Marshall is an idiot, or anything close to the sort. But on one point, the man is wrong. Dead wrong.

In case you missed it, Marshall spoke on this week's "Inside The NFL," and he said that race played a factor in the outcome of DeflateGate. In fact, Marshall said that if a black quarterback -- say, Cam Newton -- had been at the center of the DeflateGate controversy, then perhaps the charges and the discipline would have stuck.

"There are a lot of players out there that believe white players, specifically at the quarterback position, are treated differently," Marshall said.

As to whether there's a different standard for black players and white players, Marshall said, "Absolutely, at times."

As to whether that different standard also applies to punishments doled out to black players and white players, Marshall said, "At times, yes."

The New York Daily News then noted:

Marshall was asked by Boomer Esiason if players believe that if Deflategate had involved Cam Newton instead of Brady, that the suspension would have been upheld.

"Well when you look back at the history of the sport, you can build a case on that, yes," Marshall said.

Well, here's the thing with that statement. We don't need to rely on hypothetical situations, and we don't need to imagine some scenario where Cam Newton was involved in a ball tampering scenario. That exact scenario actually happened ... last November.

On a cold day in Minnesota, Newton's Panthers visited the Minnesota Vikings, who were quarterbacked that day by Teddy Bridgewater, another black quarterback. Broadcast cameras showed ball boys holding footballs in front of the sideline heaters, in an effort to make the balls a bit softer on that day when the temperature at kickoff was 12 degrees Fahrenheit.

The league reacted to this occurrence by ... issuing memos to all 32 teams, reminding them to not heat up footballs during games. And that was that.

A month later, some ball boys in New England might have let a little air out of the footballs, and quarterback Tom Brady was issued a four-game suspension for his alleged "general awareness."

That's as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as one can draw on DeflateGate, and one involved the white quarterback getting an unprecedented level of harsh discipline, and the black quarterbacks getting a reminder in the mail stating "that you can't do anything with the football in terms of heating them up with those sideline heaters."

Of course, Brady "got away" with DeflateGate, but that's not because NFL commissioner Roger Goodell let him. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it took a federal judge's ruling to declare that the commissioner treated Brady too harshly. Thus, the suspension was eliminated by the judge -- not by Goodell.

On the show, Marshall clarified that he wasn't necessarily making this point himself, that he was instead just relaying what players in NFL locker rooms believe to be true. He also made the case that he was hoping for Brady's suspension to be vacated by the judge, noting that "when one player's rights are upheld, then all players' rights are upheld." And certainly --obviously -- the complexities of the impact of race in the NFL cannot be summarized in one situation about deflated or heated footballs.

Yet on this specific point, Marshall truly missed the point. Hopefully he can share this information with his fellow players.

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