Peter King Feels 'a Lot of Shame' for Buying the NFL's Lies About Deflategate

Ethan Miller. Getty Images.

They say it takes a big man to admit when he's wrong. And I say it takes a much, much bigger man to be right all the time. 

I say this as one who trademarked the phrase "Right About Deflategate From Minute One." I know I'm not alone on that. There was a precious few other who knew the Patriots were innocent too:

… but it doesn't take us long to call the roll. 

The reason this was The Brady 4 and not The Brady 5 is that when this story broke in January of 2015, I was working full time at WEEI. If I'd still been with Barstool then, I'd have gladly tarnished my unblemished criminal record to proclaim Brady's innocence. And with my boyish bone structure, I wouldn't have lasted a minute in a Manhattan lock up before I was getting traded for a pack of smokes. But my only regret would've been that I had but one life to give for my quarterback. 

As it was, on that Monday night when the completely fake Chris Mortensen Tweet went up, I stayed up through the night looking into the story. And in the morning, posted on the station's web site that if this is how the world is going to perceive this team, if they're going to be accused of cheating and made to be the villain once again, I'm going to embrace it. Like a wrestling heel. And I swear that as soon as I wrote those words, Kirk Minehane was on the morning show saying, "If I'm a Patriots fan - if I'm Thornton - I'm embracing this right now." 

That's when I knew I'd staked out the right moral high ground. And as the facts kept rolling in and I kept doing my own research, I never once had to budge off my spot. Not one inch. Not through dozens of columns, hundreds of hours of air time, scores of interviews and several appearances on regional cable talking about it.

I bring all this up because of something Peter King said after announcing his retirement:

“When I think about it, my heart sinks. I confirmed the ESPN story about the deflated footballs after Deflategate first hit the scene. It turns out I was wrong. …

“That brought me a lot of shame. It doesn’t matter who I talked to. It doesn’t matter who told me anything. It’s my rear end on the line when I say something, when I confirm a story, and I was wrong … that is something that will haunt me … It bothers me, literally bothers me to this day.”

Again, it takes a man of integrity to say he made a mistake and feels shame:

So it's to King's credit that he's willing to address it not, at the culmination of his career. And in return, I should try to be a good Christian and offer forgiveness. 

Yeah. About that … 

I'd find it easier to find forgiveness in my heart if King, like the other 99.9% of the football media, wasn't so absolutely, positively, with total conviction, convinced the Patriots were in the wrong. Despite all the times the NFL had lied to us before. About concussions. About Sean Payton's guilt in Bountygate. About Ray Rice's innocence in Elevator Domestic Violencegate. About the countless times Roger Goodell straight up fabricated any narrative that would hide the league's guilt in any number of things. Hell, I was an idiot hired to make jokes to a drive time radio audience. Yet with a two-minute Google search I was able to find out how crooked the science-for-hire outfit the league paid to prove air pressure doesn't naturally go down in the cold is. A lie that can be disproven by a middle school Science Fair project. 

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The fact remains that the Peter Kings of the world were ready, willing, and all too able to side with a corrupt corporate entity over an innocent man who had done nothing but treat every one of them with dignity and respect. Purely out of confirmation bias. They believe it because they wanted to believe it. More the point, they were certain of Brady's guilt. There was zero benefit of the doubt. No calls for due process. No hint of uncertainty. Not a whiff of "We can't be sure, so let's wait and see how this plays out." They were lied to, for sure. But only because they willingly believed the lies instead of demanding proof. And that I cannot forgive. 

Still, when a man says he was wrong and feels shame, the decent thing to do is accept it. Even if it IS too little, too late. As long as we all acknowledge those precious few of us who never bought the lies. For some of us, loyalty still counts for something in this awful world.