Brad Johnson May Have Broke a Federal Law Before Super Bowl XXXVII

Like any "gate"-worthy scandal, the drama over deflated footballs in the National Football League is ripe with subplots—bizzarre tangents that go far beyond the initial alleged transgression.

Case in point: Brad Johnson—yes, that Brad Johnson, the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback who won a Super Bowl 12 years ago—may have broken federal law. Johnson's small, mostly-overlooked contribution to the Deflategate story may qualify as an actual crime—and even if it doesn't, it adds something substantive to the debate over chicanery in sports and what to do about it.

Johnson isn't the only former NFL signal-caller to sound off on football deflation. Mark Brunell, Troy Aikman, and others have offered their opinions. However, Johnson's contribution is unique in that he admitted to having footballs doctored. In the Super Bowl, no less. Here's what he told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times last week:

Pro Football Talk ran the headline "Brad Johnson Paid a Bribe to Tamper with Footballs at the Super Bowl." PFT writer Michael David Smith posited: "That's a shocking admission—Johnson is confessing to that he cheated to help his team win the Super Bowl, and that people who work for the NFL accepted a bribe to help one team cheat in the Super Bowl."

While deflating footballs for a competitive advantage is a violation of NFL rules, is there anything illegal about such activity, in the penal code sense? Probably. Whether done unilaterally or on direct orders from a superior, the allegations in Deflategate—if true, ahem—seem confined to the purview of the league's private justice system.

However, purported bribery of the type reportedly described by Brad Johnson could be different. Don't just take my word for it. Ask the FBI. The Bureau has a stand-alone Sports Bribery Program and its special agents are charged with investigating potential violations when such illegal activity crosses state lines.

Johnson's confession got my attention. But the word "bribery" is what really made it jump off the page. Clearly, I've spent far too much time digging around old archives in connection with the federal Sports Bribery Act of 1964. Fifty years on, the law remains on the books and includes the following:

Johnson paid off—read: bribed—ball boys to break-in footballs just the way he liked them. He arguably did so in order to influence the outcome of the Super Bowl.

In theory, at least, he may have committed a federal crime.

Of course, the odds that Johnson's pay-for-scuff will ever be investigated and prosecuted under the Sports Bribery Act are slim. After all, the Johnson case is now over a decade old. The exact details, included the identities of the cash recipients, will likely never be known. The NFL has given no indication of commencing an inquiry. Too much time has passed and law enforcement has other priorities, like making sure Pittsburgh Steelers players stay out of legal hot water. In a shrewd move regardless of any statute of limitations issue, Johnson has even qualified his remarks in a follow-up interview.

Still, the Act's reemergence in the context of Deflategate highlights how careful athletes, coaches, and team executives should be when opting to seek a clandestine competitive advantage. The law's shadow is vast. While unilateral decisions (e.g. lone wolf locker room attendants) probably fall outside the statute's grasp, the Johnson case illustrates its hypothetical limits. Sports corruption gets more attention when it overlaps with wagering, but manipulation of the non-gambling variety deserves attention, too. U.S. Senators Harry Reid and Dean Heller, both from Nevada, seem to agree.

With the Super Bowl just days away, Deflategate revelations are coming at a fever pitch. The (hopefully) soon-to-be-revealed facts derived from the NFL's investigation into the scandal could either be profound or cause the entire brouhaha to dissipate. If it's all much ado about nothing, the NFL may have to issue defiant New England owner Robert Kraft an apology; if it turns out the Patriots really did cheat, investigators should take a page from the original "gate"—Watergate—and follow the money. Because if Brady, Belichick, or a one-armed Pat Patriot paid off a locker room attendant/person of interest to let the air out of the team's footballs, this week's NFL Scandal of the Century could maybe, just maybe, become a federal case. And given Deflategate's ongoing run of complete and utter ludicrousness, wouldn't that be a fitting next step?