Only 12th?

I was cruising around this afternoon and stumbled across this story by Matt Keller that ranks the villains in the Deflategate saga, which I find to be dead on:

Boston sports fans are insane. I should know: I have been one my entire life (it’s like being Jewish – we can criticize ourselves). Deflategate turned into a massive rallying point for the entire region, and if you aren’t from New England, you may have a hard time comprehending just how big of a controversy it was. After sides were taken, anyone who came at Brady or the Patriots was turned into an enemy by a rabid fanbase (some of whom happened to work in the media). Twitter battles ensued. And the pro-Patriots media and bloggers, led by people like Jerry Thornton of Barstool Sports (then of WEEI), didn’t hesitate to take each perceived enemy to task for their sins. With Jerry’s input, I compiled a list of the biggest Deflategate villains.

Out of fifteen media villains, Our Man Shank only bags 12th place?

No 12: Dan Shaughnessy (Boston Globe)

Nicknamed Shank in Boston for the way he sticks the knife into his targets’ backs in print (close enough! - ed.) , Shaughnessy has always delighted in ribbing Boston fans with purposely contrarian viewpoints. Deflategate was manna from heaven for the curly-haired columnist.

That's it - I count thirty-six posts on this site that contain the word 'Deflategate', most of those being columns or tweets by Shank.

Special mention goes to the 2nd biggest asshole in the whole saga besides Roger Goodell (#2 under the NFL category):

No 2: Ted Wells

He authored the Wells Report, which was either an incomplete report that may have relied on some faulty assumptions and didn’t offer much in the way of proof (according to most unbiased observers) or an unscrupulous hit job by an NFL stooge that contained too many errors to count and was never meant to be objective (anyone living in New England, especially media members and Patriots employees).

So even if you split the difference here, the most charitable description you can assign to the Wells Report is that of a hatchet job, which Shank once called 'embarrassing' but given that he was burying the Patriots the entire time, it's safe to say he meant 'embarrassing - for the Patriots'. Just to remind people - once again, logic and Shank took different roads.