Elliot Stanger

Zack DePiero
Writing 2
11 May 2016
Deflategates Inconclusiveness
Deflategate, another terribly-coined scandal that is one of the most
recent in the ever-controversial National Football League (NFL), is the latest
attempt to pin one of the leagues best franchises as cheaters. To analyze
and gather a deeper understanding for this outrageous and heinous attack
on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, two scholarly pieces-- Football
under pressure: Assessing malfeasance in Deflategate by Kevin Hassett,
Joseph Sullivan, and Stan Veuger, and Nature or Naughty: Bringing
Deflategate to the High School Chemistry Classroom by Elizabeth
Megonigal -- along with and a non-academic op-ed piece published in the
New York Times also written by Kevin Hassett and Stan Veuger -- named
Deflating Deflategate were examined. In the following paper, similarities
and differences are examined between the sources rhetorical features and
conventions such as logos to present scientific facts to disprove the NFLs
verdict, pathos to better appeal to the less-academic readers emotions,
formal and non-formal diction to achieve a genre-specific and reader-friendly
tone, and how each respective author uses different moves to achieve the
purpose of their piece; disproving the NFL or creating an interesting
classroom activity that combines chemistry principles with a real world
scenario.

The first scholarly piece, Malfeasance, written by Kevin Hassett, Joseph

Sullivan, and Stan Veuger, was a research article constructed to assess the
flaws in the NFLs controversial statistical analysis and quality of data seen in
the Wells Report, which was the basis for Tom Bradys suspension. The piece
starts with background information from the case, and later presents the
data the NFL used in their investigation which they analyze, conclude, and
then label a malfeasance. Throughout the article the authors use a move
from the They Say, I Say called, The data suggests because Gillen claims,
data [is] crucial to scientific arguments, but by no means the end of the
story. This move provides previous data regarding the alleged deflated
footballs while the authors also include a rhetorical feature, logos, to present
scientific facts and equations while evaluating the statistical model and the
results that followed it in the Wells Report to reject it and counter with their
own statistical analysis. The use of this rhetorical feature, logos, paired with
the move appeals to an academically inclined reader's desire to know the
true facts. Nothing but the truth is wanted by their audience(being a
published scholarly article) and by presenting scientific facts such as Hassett,
Sullivan, and Veuger do when they argue,
that Mr. Anderson used the Logo Gauge to measure the Patriots footballs, but the Non-Logo
Gauge to measure the Colts footballs, the difference in deflation drops is no longer
statistically significant. In that scenario, the coefficient on drops to 0.23, meaning that the
measured decrease in air pressure in the Patriots footballs is estimated to be only 0.23psi
larger than the measured decrease in air pressure in the Colts footballs. This difference is
not just substantively, but also statistically insignificant (t=1.53)(Hassett,Sullivan,Veuger)

Just as the authors of Malfeasance are compelled to include scientific

data, Megonigal does the same in her classroom activity entitled, Nature or
Naughty. She wants students to [analyze] and [interpret] data using
mathematics and computational thinking. Each of the academic pieces
focus on scientific data as a way to provide a concrete argument that will
sway their educated readers. Without proof, their analysis would mean
nothing. In both scholarly pieces, a move called As a result by the They
Say, I Say appendix is used to connect the data to the main point with
analysis. Without clarifying statements that follow data, the reader would be
confused about the significance of the presented data.
The op-ed piece published in the New York Times to popularize their
original work Malfeasance -- written by the same authors of the first scholarly
article(with the subtraction of Sullivan) -- was a quasi-plea to the NFL and
the rest of the world to acknowledge their findings. The piece summarizes a
majority of the other published article and gives the reader a sense of the
many different ambiguities and holes that the Wells Report includes. Given
that the op-ed is written by the authors who wrote Malfeasance the same
moves appear in both sources.
Within each text, parallelism is used to convey an important point with
unique sentence structure. In the op-ed, the authors implore the ambiguity of
the whole situation-- while using parallelism-- in which the balls were
deflated when they claim, There are, after all, two possibilities. The first is
that the Patriots balls declined too much. The second is that the Colts balls

declined too little. And in the research article they state, The Patriots
footballs were measured first, followed by the Colts footballs, after which
those Patriots footballs that were deemed not sufficiently inflated were reinflated. [Or] The Patriots footballs were measured first, followed by reflation
of those Patriots footballs that were deemed not sufficiently inflated, and
only then were the Colts footballs measured. These two instances of
parallelism -- used to sway the reader's decision and thought-making
process -- come during important times within both pieces. Each example of
parallelism is found when they are giving one of their main arguments; that
the Wells Report ignored the second possibility of each scenario, therefore
making the results inconclusive.

The presentation of data is absent in the non-academic source, as the

methods of persuasion are less fact-based and the arguments include pathos
to sway the reader's emotions as opposed to being driven solely by facts and
the analysis that comes with the academic source and its audience. Nature
or Naughty, a classroom activity created to teach students about the
scientific principles behind Deflategate and the Wells Report, possessed a
didactic and pedantic tone while it reviewed a step-by-step exercise
completed by students to evaluate the flaws of Deflategate in a classroom
setting. Without scientific data to capture the audiences(the students)
attention in the academic piece, the authors used an informative tone
combatted with the use of the first person to reach the hearts and emotions

of the high school chemistry students. Carroll conveys, ...it is difficult to get
us to act unless we are also persuaded in our heart.(53) For example the
article states that, Considering that our impartiality was at least implicitly
recognized by the N.F.L. in the past, we believe that our analysis of the
evidence in Deflategate, in a study released Friday by the American
Enterprise Institute, could help resolve this latest controversy. In the first
part of this thesis-like statement, the informative tone is set with specific
diction and phrases like, implicitly recognized illustrate the authors
previously earned credibility from their problem solving skills shown in the
Bountygate scandal.
A different tone was presented in the scholarly article, Assessing
Malfeasance and contained a ruthless, diametric tone towards the NFL to
show their veracity. Like the non-academic source, the diction included in
the academic sources depicted the type of tone that each source would
contain. The authors of Malfeasance contend that, One could argue that the
broad range of uncertainties we have identified here makes for evidence that
does not provide a reliable foundation for decision-making, and that the
lack of robustness of the results presented suggests that the methods
applied by the Wells report are unreliable.(Hassett) within this sentence
the ruthless and diametric tone are prevalent and assist the authors in
attacking the NFL to reassess their actions regarding Deflategate.
Megonigal makes moves of her own in her analysis of the classroom
activity. This analysis which includes a step by step procedure to conduct the

activity, is meant for other teachers and educators to take and try on
students of their own. To keep her audience attracted and for this activity to
stand out from other possibly boring classroom lesson plans, Megonigal uses
the I swear this isnt boring move seen in one of the first sentences of the
introduction. She makes Deflategate sound like a soap opera(it kind of is?)
and tells the reader-- most likely a teacher-- that their students will feel like
detectives. No teacher wants their students to be bored, and Megonigal
takes advantage of that soft spot by asserting that, In this activity your
students delve into a real-life sports melodrama involving footballs, inflation
pressures, temperatures, and perhaps mischief and rulebreaking. This
ingenious move will draw extreme attention from any teacher looking to
spice up their classroom and any bored student enrolled in a required high
school chemistry course.
While examining the similarities and differences between rhetorical
features, tone, data, and how those affect the audience and purpose of
academic and non-academic sources, it is clear that each has strengths and
weaknesses in achieving different goals. At times, a scholarly article can be
more persuasive than a non-scholarly one. For example, the op-ed was
written to draw more popularity to the scholarly research article that refutes
the Wells Report, was not nearly as persuasive as the research article itself.
Most of these limitations were constrained by the conventions of the genre it
was placed in. The inclusion of scientific facts and data raised malfeasances
which made it clear that the Wells Report was wrong and the data to prove it

was present. The data included in the article would not have fit in the op-ed
piece, as it was catered to a broader audience which had yet to be
introduced to all the details of the story and is most likely unfamiliar with the
mathematical processes used. The op-ed was able to use first person -unlike the scholarly article -- which allowed the authors to maintain an
informative tone combatted with pathos. The classroom activity was different
in that data was not presented, but instead it was included as a background
information handout for students to ease them with constructing an opinion
regarding Deflategate. The genre suited this specific scholarly piece perfectly
and any other genre that the information was presented in would have
negatively impacted its effectiveness by not allowing it to appeal to bored
students and teachers wanting an interesting classroom activity. Similar
topics can be written about using different rhetorical features, moves, and
purposes, but some genres suit different topics better than others to convey
the same message.

Works Cited
Carroll, Laura Bolin. Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical
Analysis. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter
in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.
Hassett, Kevin A., and Stan A. Veuger. "Deflating Deflategate." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 13 June 2015. Web. 11 May 2016.
Hassett, Kevin A., Stan Veuger, and Joseph W. Sullivan. "Football under
Pressure: Assessing Malfeasance in Deflategate." - IOS Press. N.p., 17
Dec. 2015. Web. 11 May 2016.
Megonigal, Elizabeth J. "Nature or Naughty: Bringing "Deflategate" to the
High School Chemistry Classroom." - Journal of Chemical Education. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 11 May 2016.