Ah, Deflategate, how we’ve missed you.
An NFL official has been fired after it was revealed that he sold several allegedly deflated footballs used in the 2015 AFC Championship Game instead of donating them to charity.
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ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported on Wednesday afternoon that the NFL had fired the anonymous “League Official 1” after it was discovered that the official was selling off official NFL footballs for a profit instead of donating them to charities.
“There are a few different league officials, according to people I spoke with today, at the game, who handled the footballs,” Schefter said. “League employees: League Employee 1, League Employee 2 and League Employee 3, we’ll call them, for lack of a better phrases, whose jobs are to handle the balls on game day. And League Official 1, he’s also supposed to take the balls out of play and then send them off to a charitable endeavor to raise money for a charitable endeavor that the league is embarking upon. Only on this day, and since that day, the league has since fired that employee for allegedly selling off some of those footballs on the side. So that employee — League Official 1 — has been fired since the AFC Championship Game.”
The footballs in question were used in the 2015 AFC Championship Game, the site of “DeflateGate” where it was reported that 11 out of 12 footballs used by the New England Patriots in the game were inflated well below the league regulations. The controversy lasted for several weeks leading up to the Super Bowl with NFL experts, scientists, ball manufacturers and even late night news discussing the issue and speculating that either Patriots head coach Bill Belichick or QB Tom Brady could be punished for what happened.
ProFootballTalk.com speculated that the anonymous league employee could be facing criminal charges for stealing NFL property.
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