No Justice, No Peace: Patriots Protesters Arrested at NFL Headquarters

Patriots Fans Arrested at NFL Headquarters
Twitter/Lisa Kraus Edwards
Daniel J. Flynn

Deflategate, already offered as a for-credit college course at the University of New Hampshire, has now become a protest movement.

New York City cops arrested a small group of New England Patriots fans, channeling the spirit of Sam Adams and the men who gave the franchise its name or maybe just chugging Sam Adams and various spirits, who protested in the lobby of NFL headquarters on Tuesday afternoon.

The NFL’s four-game suspension of Tom Brady and punishment meted out to his team, including the subtraction of next year’s first-round draft pick, motivated the demonstration.

The four men wore old-school red jerseys and Flying Elvis-era blue and white shirts. The common denominator? #12.

Outside of the Manhattan building holding the NFL’s corporate offices, the group held signs bearing such messages as “Free Brady,” “Fire Goodell,” “They hate us cause they ain’t us,” and “Kensil Is a Bitch.”

Mike Kensil, the NFL vice president of game operations who worked for the New York Jets for more than two decades, attended the AFC Championship Game after the Indianapolis Colts emailed him about possible irregularities in Patriot game balls. “We weighed the balls,” he allegedly told New England’s equipment manager at the game. “You are in big f—ing trouble.”

The protestors, affiliated with Boston’s BarstoolSports.com, handcuffed themselves together in the lobby of 345 Park Ave. before New York City police handcuffed them separately. The cops hauled them off in a police van to jail, where, presumably, the inmates prefer the Jets and the Giants.

“[Dave] Portnoy literally went to jail doing his part to support his football team,” Barstool Sports noted in a promotion calling on fans to join its protest movement. “Actually gave up his own freedom in exchange for Tom Brady’s. The least you can do is buy a shirt.”

The act of civil disobedience follows a movement to delay the unveiling of the Super Bowl 49 banner at Gillette Stadium until Tom Brady returns, the team replacing the Lombardi Trophy logo on its Twitter page with an icon featuring the embattled quarterback, a GoFundMe page raising money to pay the $1 million fine levied against the franchise, and “Free Brady” t-shirts popping up for sale around the internet.

The Patriots #12 jersey outsold the duds of all other NFL players, save for rookies Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston, since the release of the Wells Report, which judged it “more probable than not” that the quarterback generally knew of a scheme, also dubbed “more probable than not,” to deflate balls.

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