The big day is finally here. Tom Brady is going to get a chance to tell his side of the Deflategate story to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at a hearing for the appeal of his four-game suspension.

While cameras won’t be present at the hearing, it is sure to get round-the-clock coverage on the NFL Network and ESPN. Some of the most prominent players in this sordid drama reportedly will be in attendance, including Brady, Ted Wells — author of the now infamous Wells Report — Jeffrey Kessler, Brady’s union-appointed attorney, and heavy hitters from both the NFL Players Association and the NFL league office. We’ve heard nothing about whether Jim McNally and/or John Jastremski, Brady’s supposed toadies in the alleged conspiracy to deflate footballs, will be there.

The best way for some young go-getter intern to get himself in the commissioner’s good graces this morning would be to lay out across his desk the front pages of all today’s sports sections in the country with Deflategate stories. We’re in the dead zone for national sports coverage now that the NBA, NHL and U.S. Open have concluded. Training camps still don’t open for another month and the NFL is virtually unchallenged in the national sports conversation. And no one was arrested or assaulted to put it there. Goodell and his enablers, the NFL owners, must be very pleased.

After rejecting the NFLPA’s request to recuse himself from the appeal, Goodell will preside over the hearing. He’s stated more than once that he’s looking forward to looking Brady in the eye, presumably so he can decide whether the man he believes asked for the assistance of two low-level Patriots employees to help him break the rules really, truly thinks that he did nothing wrong.

The NFLPA’s grounds for appeal center on three things — that Goodell himself didn’t impose the punishment (one of his underlings, Troy Vincent, did, a violation of the collective bargaining agreement), the unprecedented nature of his four-game suspension and the lack of evidence supporting claims that Brady “more likely than not” knew about the deflation of the balls.

All three counter-arguments suggest that the NFL and Goodell were making things up as they go along, going all the way back to the measurement of the footballs before and during the AFC Championship. This isn’t the first time someone has accused the NFL of inconsistencies going into an appeal, and it hasn’t proven to be a very effective strategy to having punishment rescinded.

The league is much more receptive to contrition than contradiction.

But historically, few players have been better equipped to contradict than Brady and the NFLPA today. In the six weeks since its release, the Wells Report has come under increasing scrutiny, and it has been shown time and again that its conclusions were based on shaky evidence. The Patriots created a web site, wellsreportcontext.com, with links to more than two dozen published articles, reports and videos discrediting the science of the NFL and Wells’ findings. No doubt the NFLPA will have credible experts and data to present at the hearing today. The fact that Wells reportedly will be present tells us the NFL is expecting an all-out assault on the basis of its punishment.

All of that does not guarantee Brady will get a fair hearing, or a reduction — let alone complete repeal — of his four-game suspension. In fact, he’d be foolish not to anticipate the opposite.

In the name of integrity, the NFL allowed its game officials to do a half-baked job of enforcing its rules, allowed one of its star players to twist in the wind in front of the national media leading up to and during its premier spectacle, then spent millions of dollars on a shoddy report that would get a D in a high school science class. Now, the man who has the most to lose if this whole farce gets 1/5th of the national attention it did before the Super Bowl is the self-appointed ultimate arbiter of what is best for the game.

What is best for the game is for Brady and the NFLPA to not back down. This is going to federal court before it’s over. Patriots fans will have their questions about New England’s secondary, offensive line and running game for the 2015 season answered before Deflategate is resolved.

Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638

rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @RAWmaterial33

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