It may not have been clear from my earlier post — I should hope it wasn’t, I suppose — but I confess to having a rooting interest in Deflate-gate. I very much want the Patriots to be cleared of any serious wrongdoing. I am an unusual Jet fan in that my younger son is a Pats fanatic whose favorite player is No. 12. (I think it is his revenge against me for ruining his life by turning him into a Met fan — he wasn’t going to let me do it to him twice!) A life-size “Fathead” poster of Tom Brady throwing what looks to be a regulation-size, fully-inflated pigskin hangs on the wall next to my guy’s bed and is one of the first and last things I lay eyes on every day.

My kid would be crushed if it turns out Brady did something really bad. And I’d be crushed for him – to say nothing of the fact that I’ve grown to admire Brady’s sheer greatness over the years. I hope this turns out to be much ado about . . . not much.