The Great Deflategate Conspiracy: A Farce of Our Times - Couverture souple

The biggest scandal in the annals of sports has rocked the nation. At the center of it are The Genius, the Golden Boy, and the greatest team in the history of pro football. Will they survive it with their reputations in tact or will they sink down into the deep, dark depths of dishonor with Charlie Hustle, Lance Armstrong, and the Chicago Black Sox? The Great Deflategate Conspiracy: A Farce of our Times rips the pigskin off and tells the wholly imaginary story of what really happened. Excerpt: Fat Balls. In the runway to the locker room, Grady passed the Deflator and the Inflator, two team staffers assigned to equipment management. They had earned their respective and unusual nicknames because one was grossly overweight and the other was pathetically underweight and they were both always adjusting their diets accordingly. The Inflator was specifically in charge of football inventory, behind the scenes making sure there was a plentiful supply of balls in good playing condition during practices and games. The Deflator was more hands-on, scuffing up the balls and gauging their internal pressure to suit the rigorous standard of his boss, the Golden Boy. The Deflator had come to his position by birth. His Daddy, once known as The Needle, had prepared footballs for some of the great names in the game—Otto Graham, Roger Staubach, Elvis Grbac. At the moment Grady walked by them, they were checking their MyPlate apps on their cell phones to see what brand of bacon had the most calories. The Deflator was getting married in a few months and the Inflator was to be his best man. Neither of them was looking at all spiffy in his tux, so they were on a mission to get into their best tux-wearing weight. But they couldn’t let Grady know any of that. Around the Minutemen, the inflexible rule was: Do your goddamn job. So the Deflator quickly looked up at Grady, tapped on his phone and said, “Checking on the weather for you, GT.” “Winds out of the northeast,” the Inflator added. Grady nodded knowingly. He’d already printed out a detailed weather forecast for himself during breakfast. When they saw Grady head into the Quarterback’s Room, they turned back to MyPlate. “See, man! What I tell you?” exclaimed the Inflator. “Kirkland Signature Fully Cooked Bacon, 80 calories for two slices; Farmer John Classic Premium Cut, 100 calories.” “Crazy shit,” argued Deflator. “You think they raising fat-free pigs down on those farms. Fat’s to a pig what air pressure is to a football. It’s their identity. You can’t mess with it.” Just then they both looked up to see Malcolm Olotoonji walking past. “Uh-oh,” said the Inflator softly. “Trouble,” the Deflator replied. “Someone best ought tell Coach. He hates that dude coming around.” Minutemen coach Lyle Lessinger, known throughout the football world as The Genius, was a potpourri of negative emotions...hatred, disdain, indifference, paranoia...especially when it came to the League front office. He found the League establishment largely clueless about the day-to-day requirements of getting a football team ready for competition at the highest level. That cluelessness manifested itself, he believed, in a lot of unnecessary rules and regulations that were either detrimental or utterly incidental to the performance of world-class football. He regarded the League hierarchy much the same way a field commander in war regards the brass sitting at desks back behind the lines...with contempt. This is the deluxe edition, including totally new Tuck Rule material.

Dan Riley grew up as a New York “Football” Giants fan in a border town in the Boston-New York rivalry. His first gridiron heroes went by the names Sam Huff, Y.A. Tittle, and Frank Gifford (whose #16 adorned his shoes, shirts, and hats). His allegiance started wavering in the lean, late 1960s, and he actually found himself rooting for the New York Jets in Super Bowl III because, like many in the counterculture, he believed that Joe Willie Namath was all about love, peace, and happiness. In 1971 he allowed his admiration for Stanford quarterback Jim Plunkett to lead him to the once laughable New England Patriots, who drafted Plunkett #1 in the pro football draft. He’s been a proud and very, very satisfied Patriot fan ever since. His previous works include The Red Sox Reader, The Yankee Reader, Look Before You Lean (under the pen name Employee X), The Dan Riley School for a Girl, and the award winning play Spinelli.