During final oral arguments delivered Wednesday in front of Judge Richard Berman in New York, NFL Management Council attorney Daniel Nash offered an aside while being grilled about how the length of Tom Brady's suspension was arrived at. How much for the ball deflation; how much for being uncooperative, was the topic at hand.
Nash offered an observation: "There is another view, and there are people within the NFL who would express this view, that it should be more, it should be four games just for the ball tampering,"
Taking longhand notes during the hearing and then dictating a story to our desk, I incorrectly reported Nash had additionally said, "and four games for non-cooperation."
While it can be inferred that there is and was sentiment in the NFL that Brady take an additional hit for the non-cooperation, he did not state a number of games or mention that transgression.
I didn't realize my error until reading a transcript of the hearing Friday night.
How did I conflate what Nash said into something more? Haste. Poor notes. Recollections of reports made around the time of the suspension that an eight-game suspension had been lobbied for.
Regardless, it was an incorrect accounting of Nash' comments and I retold inaccurately often enough that it deserves correcting.