A fan so incensed by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s punishment of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady over “Deflategate” went to the expense of hiring a banner-dragging plane to fly over the commissioner’s vacation home in Maine to tell him to go “home to New York.”
Patriots fan Richard Pate hired a plane to fly the banner over Goodell’s Prouts Neck home near the town of Scarborough to let Goodell know just how much he disliked the Brady decision. The banner that Pate commissioned read, “Comm. Goodell Jet Home to N.Y.”
“There was absolutely no vindictiveness whatsoever with my banner,” Pate told the media over the weekend. “But the commissioner has been anything but impartial. He has put the Patriots at a competitive disadvantage with his ruling.”
In part, Pate was replying to the banner that a group of New York Jets fans flew over Gillette Stadium last week as the Patriots started their preseason practices. The Jets fans’ banner read, “Cheaters Look Up.”
Pate spent at least $450 for the flight and said “it was worth every penny.”
Some reports note that no one was able to confirm if Goodell was even at his Prouts Neck home as the banner made its rounds. Still, the news no doubt reached him soon enough.
The flying banner comes only a few weeks after the NFL asked Scarborough police to keep any eye on Goodell’s home for fear that the Brady decision might bring threats to the property.
The local police chief admitted that the NFL contacted him about the home. “They did reach out and let us know about the decision and that it might not be popular,” Chief Robbie Moulton said at the end of July.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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