Response. I plowed the fields of our family farm. As a physician decades ago, i played basketball. And whats the state of our billionaires . Maybe davos has an answer. Shanny and caddie should be the motive of this meeting. All in starts right now. Good evening in new york. Im chris hayes. Almost 100 million americans watched the championship, three times as many as watched last nights state of the union. Tonight the most profitable Sports League in america, one of the largest Media Enterprises we have faces yet another crisis. That is because there is increasing evidence according to a new report from espn that the new England Patriots now super bowlbound may have been caught cheating in their route to the Indianapolis Colts to the championship game. According to the report nearly all of the game balls on the patriot side were underinflated. Chris mortenson, the nfl has found 11 of the new England Patriots 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the league requirements. The footballs were inflated two pounds per square inch, or 2 psi below nfl requirements. Psi is 12. 5 to 13. 5. While underinflated footballs are favored by both the flavors who catch them and the quarterbacks, like tom brady, there is no reporting thus far about who may have altered the footballs. Or even whether they were properly inspected in the first place. Nfls official statement is, our review is continuing. Wee will provide an update as soon as possible. According to espn, significant details emerging, reporting that the patriots footballs were tested at the half and reinflated and put back in play for the second half and tested after the game. The report did not reveal the results of the test after the game. Bear in mind, the tactile quality of the football, the lengths the teams go through, is well known. Like this fascinating New York Times story from last season, quote, a new ball despised for its sheen and waxy gloss is easily hit. Each team has 12 to 20 balls, it is meticulously groomed and cared for according to the needs of the quarterback. Not even tom brady himself told eei radio he prefers underinflated footballs. When gronk scores, he spikes the ball, he deflates the ball. I like that. But i feel bad for the football because he puts everything he can into the spikes. Brady referring to, obviously, rob gronkowski. And laughed off that the footballs in the championship game were underinflated. Did you get the sense that you were able to grip the ball better than the colts last night . Would you care to weigh in on that . I think i heard it all at this point. Oh, god. Thats the last of my worries yeah. I dont respond to stuff like this. Among the many questions is this one. Has it evolved into rule breaking deflation cheating. What the hell else has the new England Patriots been up to lately . Writing an entire book on tom brady. I said, i will believe any allegation against Bill Belichick, because of what we found out during spygate when it turned out the patriots were taping practices of other teams. They ended up paying a fine. This does not surprise me at all. Well, this is i mean, to me, there are a couple of things going on here. Number one, to me, the crux of how serious this is, is whether or not the balls were deflated after they were already inspected by the game official. If that happened, then the new England Patriots are in a lot of trouble. Right. That is when i will start taking this story as seriously as a lot of other people are. What do you mean taking it seriously . Its not like were leading with the story tonight, charlie. I would have loved to have sat in on the cram session you had with the staff to learn about how the nfl handles footballs. Oh, we are deep in the balls rule book, believe me. Which is, by the way, for a multiabout zillion dollar enterprise yeah, that they have to inflate them at the proper amount. The teams hire the ball boys, the ball people on the sidelines. Hire them yourself, nfl. Right. Its boutonniere money for you. The other part of this, right, is that you have this situation in which people perceive i mean, last night when this broke, that this looked like it actually happened, we were doing the state of the union things, that Bill Belichick is the dick nixon of sports. Nixon did not need to break into watergate to beat mcgovern. He was a political mastermind even above his dirty tricks. And yet there was no boundary in his mind between things that were fair game and things that werent fair game. Yeah. I think theres a lot of conflation with Bill Belichick of cheating with gamesmanship. For example, there was nothing unethical or untoward by him putting together some funky formations against baltimore. Right. But thats been lumped in with this. Okay . As i said, if it turns out they tampered with the footballs after the game officials had already inspected them, thats really serious. I mean, thats especially since it appears that this complaint dates back to the regular season game, between indianapolis and new england back in november. So he had to know he was being looked at. Thats a crazy thing, the colts apparently complained about this. I saw one report, the colts secondary who picked off a pass late in the first half is the one who reported it here. To me, it also makes me wonder, what kind of stuff is going on at the edges, or outside of our view that is like spygate, that is like this, that we havent gotten hip to yet . This is you know, i think a blessed relief in some ways for the nfl because of the scandal that doesnt involve the destruction of the human body. Thats right. Or any kind of violence. This is corking the bat. This is Gaylord Perry with vaseline under his baseball cap. Roger goodell is happy to go before the cameras and take tough questions about deflated balls rather than traumatic brain injury and domestic violence. Yeah. I think thats probably true. But i think given his absolutely pathetic performance in those two areas earlier this season, i think he might come down very severely on the patriots over this. Just to demonstrate his basic integritude. He cant do anything in the next two weeks. In theory, he can do anything he wants. Do you think in the next two weeks . Except forfeit the game. My feeling is they wont rule on this until after the super bowl. Which i guarantee you, every journalist in america goes to media day will, because its an extraordinary gathering of absolute crazoids. Youll be sitting there in front of russell wilson, and behind you somebody will ask him a fairly involved question about his nutritional regime, and hell turn around and it will be a guy dressed as a carrot. Charlie pierce, thank you very much. Thanks. Not claiming any football deflating tactic, the colts lost 457. Colts fans are still looking for action from the nfl. I believe, you know, its just another one of those patriots gimmicks. One of the Bill Belichick swindles. I dont think theres any question that Roger Goodell, commissioner goodell and the entire league, administration is going to be under the microscope in determining how theyll move forward on this. Theyre cheaters. And they should be punished for it. Earlier today, nbc sports analyst russ tucker, and offensive lineman with the patriots, and hines ward gave me their reaction to the news. Well, its about the integrity of the football game. And anytime someone uses some way, some form or fashion to gain an advantage on the football field, youre breaking the rules. Its called cheating. Thats why its a story. It affects the integrity of our football game. Ross, do you imagine there will be a sanction, if in fact theyre found guilty of doing this on purpose . Yeah, i think there will be serious sanctions. I think there should. This is a pattern of behavior. This is a second offense. And evidently you look back at spygate, belichick was fined, they lost draft picks. Apparently that was not enough of a deterrent. It really bothers me as a guy who spends some time there, now, i wasnt there on one of the super bowl teams, but when this stuff happens, its such a minimal advantage, yet when you get caught, everybodys able to say, look, theyre cheaters, and it really minimizes the accomplishments of all those guys that were there during the run earlier. Or even with what they accomplished this year. Its a shame. If youre a patriots player, my sense is if in fact this was done purposefully, a small number of people knew about it. If you were one of the people on the squad that had a blowout victory on sunday, somehow that victory that you worked very hard for is discounted in the public mind. You were never consulted on that, i would imagine. Its a terrible risk reward ratio. The reward is minimal. Brady actually played better in the second half, and they won 457. So the reward you get out of doing it is very small. But the risk, if you get caught, which it looks like they might have, is huge. Because it totally calls your credibility into question. And it diminishes all of your accomplishments in a lot of peoples minds. For people who if you dont think youre gaining an advantage, why let the air out of the football. Just leave it alone. Hines, you had to catch footballs for a number of years. Its hard to catch footballs in cold weather, when its wet and slippery. It was cold and wet during that game. How much of a difference does it make . There was a New York Times article back in 2003 that is a ritual breaking in a ball for eli manning. It makes a fair amount of difference the grip and feel you have on the ball depending how its been worked over and inflated. Its all about the grip. Playing in pittsburgh, with ben roethlisberger, who has huge hands, sometimes he wore gloves at times. He wanted to make sure he got a true feel for the football. So he would ask the ball boy to scuff it up a little bit. Its all how he felt about holding the football. Out of all the footballs they used in the game, he communicated with the ball boy, hey, i like the scuff, scuff it up a little more. Its all about the feel. For tom brady who doesnt wear a glove in the game, you know, he just wants to use his bare hands, but sometimes you want to get a good grip on the football. So by doing that, you tend to let air out of the football so you have a better handle on the football. And you have more velocity on your throws. Because he doesnt wear a glove while hes playing football. So ross, lets say now youve got the situation where this is the two weeks of the year where the nfl does its most amount of publicity, right . There even the two weeks leading up to the super bowl, Roger Goodell gives his press conference, press all over from the world in town. This is all anyones going to talk about. How does the league handle it . Well, most of the reports coming out indicate that theyre going to wait until after the super bowl to announce anything. Good luck. I know. I think part of that is because i think they want to try to identify how many of their teams might be doing this. I dont know if they want to throw the book at the patriots and the patriots say, oh, really . Because other teams are doing this, other teams are doing that. And get a grasp of how many other teams are doing this. Personally i think they should announce something friday afternoon. By the time early next week starts, we can talk about it for a couple of days. But maybe by wednesday, the focus will be on the game. I would do it friday afternoon if i was the nfl. Thats usually when they like to break the bad news. Hines, have you ever heard of Something Like this . Ross brings up a good point. It looks like at the collegiate level they were doing Something Like this. Is this something they talked about in your nfl career . Not at all. Its usually about the quarterback. He touches the quarterback every play. Hes the guy. He has to have a good feel of the football while hes in the pocket and throwing the passes. But i look at a distraction. This is that week that you have to really put in your game plan, and really get the true preparation that you need. When you go down to arizona next week, youre going to have distractions throughout the day. Youre going to be asked about this, what happened, who did it, why they did it, you know, why they did the whole thing. And it cant be good for the patriots to be on the cusp of the super bowl to be worrying about who about the deflated football. All right. Ross and hines, i really appreciate you guys talking to me tonight. No problem. My pleasure. Its been 23 hours since the state of the union. Over that time its been pretty hard to figure out just what the republican response to president obamas state of the union actually is. Well attempt to figure that out ahead. Today in the year 2015, the worlds greatest body voted 981 stating that Climate Change is real, and is not a hoax. That is, i suppose, the good news. The bad news is the United States senate was voting on whether Climate Change is real in 2015. And the other bad news is that after passing this amendment, they voted on two more amendments on Climate Change. The first one stating, quote, Climate Change is real and human activity contributes to Climate Change. And that failed to overcome a filibuster, going down to defeat 5940. The last amendment went one step further stating, quote, Climate Change is real, and human activity significantly contributes to Climate Change. That, by the way, is the overwhelming Scientific Consensus around the planet. This one also failed to overcome a filibuster and barely got a majority. 5049. This is what your congress does in the year of our lord 2015. They deliberate and vote on the truths about the world. Because apparently the jury is still out on science. Boy once upon a time, there was a nice house that lived with a family. One day, it started to rain. The house tried to keep out all the water, but water got inside and ruined everybodys everythings. The house thought she let the family down. They just didnt think it could happen. They told the house they would take better care of her. Always. Announcer protect what matters. Get flood insurance. At every step, we were told our goals were misguided, or too ambitious, that we would crush jobs and explode deficits. Instead, weve seen the fastest Economic Growth in over a decade. Our deficits cut by twothirds. A stock market that has doubled. And Health Care Inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years. [ applause ] this is good news, people. [ laughter ] the president last night didnt sound humbled by novembers electoral defeat. He sounded confident and unapologetic. I have no more campaigns to run. [ applause ] my only agenda i know, because i won both of them. [ applause ] [ cheers and applause ] New York Times writing obama defiantly sets an ambitious agenda. U. S. Version of the guardian said off the cuff and full of swagger, obamas state of the union leaves the gop enraged. Among those republicans upset by last nights speech, senator orren hatch of utah. Tom cole said, frankly, you need to remember he lost the midterm elections. Weve had one provocative move after another. Chris murphy, democrat from connecticut. Member of the Senate Foreign relations committee. Before we get to iran, and keystone and all that stuff, what was that moment like in the gallery when the president ad libbed that line . It was hard for a lot of us to hear what he said. But clearly it was a pretty spectacular moment. I think most republicans that i have talked to gave him credit for ad libbing pretty successfully. The reality is, theres no reason for this guy to be humbled, because he didnt run for president and win midterm elections, he ran for president to bring this economy back to life, to restore purchasing power to the middle class, and fix the broken health care system. He explained what the facts are, that our economy is in a better position than anybody thought it would be six years into his presidency, that major pieces of legislation like the Health Care Law are doing better than even the biggest proponents like me thought it would. Thats not defiance. Thats not poking republicans in the face. Thats just telling it like it is. He now, on the day after the state of the union, the day of the state of the union, all the eyes are on him. Today is the first real working day after that in which the Republican Congress in both houses get to set their agenda. They clearly are headed on a path of confrontation with the president , particularly on two issues. On keystone and orion. Iran, this is bob menendez, this is what he had to say about the president and white houses rhetoric on iran negotiations and the operations and new sanctions. Take a listen. I have to be honest with you. The more i hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of tehran. And it feeds to the iranian narrative of victimization, when they are the ones with the original sin. Illicit Nuclear WeaponsProgram Going back over the course of 20 years, that they are unwilling to come clean on. The president has issued a veto threat on new iran sanctions. You can probably find about ten democratic votes. Where is this going . Well, the president s made it very clear to both democrats and republicans that an attempt to pass sanctions today is an invitation to scuttle these negotiations. What you effectively do is give the iranians, one, an excuse to walk away from the table because new sanctions would be a violation of the interim agreement were living under today, and two, you would give countries like china and russia to walk away from sanctions because they blame the United States for the negotiations falling apart. I hope that were going to stand with the president. I have a lot of respect for my friend bob menendez. I think its unfair, the characterization that he made of