Deflategate will truly never ever go away because people keep bringing it up over and over again. Surprisingly enough, the person who brought it up most recently and forced it into the headlines is New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Kraft spoke about Deflategate and other football (and non-football) issues during an interview this week during Bloomberg Breakaway in New York. The Patriots owner was pretty blunt about the sanctions being related to a nonsense violation.
“Well, I don’t hold grudges, but I also don’t forget anything,” Kraft said during the interview. “Envy and jealousy are incurable diseases. I’m going into my 24th season as an owner. I’m passionate about owning a football team in my hometown.
“If I hadn’t won, I would be so angry at our folks and thinking about what we’d have to do (to win a title). So, our competitors, I understand how they brought pressure on the league office to be very strong and (lobbied) not to compromise on an issue that was nonsense and foolishness.”
After going in on the Deflategate situation, Kraft then went on to talk proudly of how his team managed to go 3-1 without Tom Brady to start last season. He also said the 2017 Super Bowl comeback was good for a very specific group of people.
“Great lesson for the millennials on how hard work, perseverance and never giving up” Kraft said.
Outside of talking about Deflategate, Kraft detailed what he went through when he hired Bill Bellichick.
“When I hired him, people told me I shouldn’t,” Kraft said of Belichick’s hire in 2000. “We had to build a stadium. We needed goodwill from the public. We needed people who interviewed well and were gracious. People sent me tapes of him from Cleveland. In his five years in Cleveland, he had a losing record in four of the five years.
“In life, if you’re picking your life partner or key managers in your company, you can look at the curriculum vitae and look at all these things, but it’s (about) the simpatico of a connection. What is right for me may not be right for you.”
You can rewatch the entire interview here:
.@business on #Periscope: We're LIVE with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on the secret to continued success https://t.co/eSHhFBfV1o
— Sandra Brown (@MsRico626) May 3, 2017
