Schrödinger's Quarterback

The NFL season started tonight. The game was preceded by a show was a strange cross between sports talk and mass-market entertainment.  I realize it must be hard to book this concert: like the Superbowl halftime show, you have to entertain all of America, but unlike the Superbowl halftime show, you don't have the money or audience to lure A-list musicians.  But still, I'd love to know what calculation led to booking Ellie Goulding and Train to perform in between football talking heads.

But it wasn't just the entertainment that was awkward, there was also the talk about the Patriots' deflated-ball scandal.  In the same way their victory in the Superbowl made it impossible for the league to sweep the whole deal under the carpet, their presence in the opener (and another victory) keeps people talking about it.  Here's the problem:

• Probably, they're guilty.  But...
• It was a relatively inconsequential rule.  But...
• It was a distinct, conscious effort to cheat.  But...
• It probably didn't make any difference to the outcome.  But...
• These are the Superbowl champions, so you can't really ignore it.  But...
• We don't have a smoking gun, so we can't prove anything.  But...
• We love to worship the victors, and now we can't, because there's questions hanging over them.  But...
• We also kind of hint that cheating is okay.  But...
• This isn't a player who's carved out a bad-boy reputation, this is the Golden Boy Tom Brady.  But...
• There's always someone looking to knock down the super successful; it's easy to dismiss this as the claims of sore losers. But...
• The Patriots have a reputation for bending the rules, thus making the claims compelling.

So all the usual ways our society deals with controversy won't work. It's too big to forget, there's too little evidence for us to jump to a conclusion, and there's no way for us to twist morals to make a wrong look like a right.  We're just going to have to live with ambiguity hanging over this season and this team.