USA TODAY Sports
The initial crime was silly, the NFL's equivalent of a frat-house prank. What Tom Brady did afterward was worse, much worse, and for that he deserves every second of his four-game penalty.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell dropped a nice little bombshell in his decision to uphold the reigning Super Bowl MVP's suspension: Brady had his cell phone destroyed on March 5 or 6, just as the folks investigating allegations he and the New England Patriots had tampered with footballs were asking for it.
Records of an inordinate and unusual amount of phone calls and text messages with equipment assistant John Jastremski in the days after Deflategate broke were now conveniently gone.