The Appeals courts NEVER ruled that the Patriots did anything wrong. In fact, in the first Appeals court case, when the NFL's lawyers were asked if there was any evidence that Tom Brady had asked anybody to change the air pressure in the footballs after the referee Walt Anderson had checked and approved the footballs for use in the football game, the NFL lawyers, now under oath, stated that there was no evidence that Tom Brady asked anybody to do anything outside of the NFL rules.
In fact, one of the amicus briefs filed during the Second Circuit court proceedings was by 20 or so science Professors from around the country stating that the Exponent "science" was essentially junk science and BS and wrong.
What the Second Circuit ruling stated was that the player's agreement allowed Roger Goodell to rule any way he wanted based upon what he believed. It did not matter whether or not Roger Goodell was right or wrong in his interpretations, or if the Exponent "science" was proven to be junk science. The Second Circuit said he could rule anyway he wanted to rule.
Here is the science Professors amicus brief.
Here is MIT Professor John Leonard debunking the Exponent "science" as completely wrong. Note that he states upfront that he is not a Patriots fan but a Philadelphia Eagles fan who got his heart broken when the Patriots beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl.
And if this was not enough, all one has to go to the Wells Report itself and the Exponent Report to see in black and white that there were serious issues, possibly fraud, happening. That is providing one could read and piece together information that was separated by 100 pages.
For example, Exponent stated that Bill Belichick's press conference statement that gloving a football could have had a long-term lowering of pressure was claimed to be wrong per Exponent's testing of the Patriot's gloving procedure.
The problem with that statement by Exponent was that they NEVER tested the Patriots gloving process to make that conclusion! That is the ultimate example of junk science. Namely, make a conclusion based on not testing what was done.
The Patriots gloved the football, then set the pressure to 12.6 psi while the football was still hot (see pages 49-50 of Wells Report). In other words, the Patriots gloved the football raising the temperature of the football which raised the football pressure. They then removed hot air from the football to set the pressure to 12.6 psi. And when the football further cooled to the ambient temperature surrounding the football, the pressure had to further drop, unless you do not believe in physics.
Exponent set the pressure to 12.5 psi when the football was cold, and then gloved the football (see pages 33-35 of Appendix 1 of Wells Report). In other words, Exponent NEVER removed hot air in the football after gloving to reset the pressure! Exponent left out the final step of the Patriots gloving procedure!
To put it bluntly, the Exponent gloving procedure test was a fraudulent test.
The question is why?
Did the NFL's lawyers not give Exponent the correct Patriots gloving process and Exponent happened to guess wrong? That would be fraud on the part of the NFL lawyers.
Was Exponent given the correct Patriots gloving process and Exponent purposely did not test it. That is fraud by Exponent.
Or was what was given to Exponent an incorrect Patriots gloving process where the NFL lawyers made an "honest" mistake. Of course, it was "honest" if that was what happened. Sure.
Or somehow the four Exponent people doing the actual testing plus the Princeton Physics Professor Dr. Daniel Marlow, who was a technical consultant hired to verify everything was done reasonably correct, just somehow missed the fact that the Patriots gloving process had a resetting of the football pressure AFTER gloving was done. If that is true, then it does not say much for the technical competence of these people.
Unfortunately, what was being challenged in the Appeals court cases was not the scientific accuracy of what Exponent did, but whether or not Roger Goodell was allowed to rule anyway he wanted to rule based solely on what he thought.
My God, as was shown during the first Appeals court case when the notes from the formal NFL appeals hearing with Tom Brady were forced by the court to be publicly released, in Roger-the-Dodger's ruling of the four game suspension it was there in black and white that Roger lied as to what Tom Brady had said during this hearing. And even with an outright lie in the ruling, the courts eventually ruled that Roger-the-Dodger could make any ruling he wanted, even if the ruling he made contained lies!
Now to me, that actually goes against the Federal law regarding when arbitration ruling can be vacated by the courts. According to the Federal Arbitration Act, U.S. Code Title 9, Section 10 an arbitration ruling can be thrown out:
1). where the award was procured by corruption, fraud, or undue means;
2). where there was evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators, or either of them;
3). where the arbitrators were guilty of misconduct in refusing to postpone the hearing, upon sufficient cause shown, or in refusing to hear evidence pertinent and material to the controversy; or of any other misbehavior by which the rights of any party have been prejudiced; or
4). where the arbitrators exceeded their powers, or so imperfectly executed them that a mutual, final, and definite award upon the subject matter submitted was not made.
Items 2 to 4 are essentially procedural in nature. That is, a Court can determine from recorded hearings, written and verbal statements, and other procedural information whether or not an accused basic rights as defined here have been infringed upon to a high enough degree to merit overturning an arbitration ruling.
However, item 1 typically requires discovery in order to determine if "corruption, fraud, or undue means" has occurred.
And by the Courts not allowing full discovery of correspondence between the parties acting on the NFL's side, the hiding of possible criminal activity can be shielded from the defense of an accused.
In my opinion that is wrong, but arbitration is purposely streamlined and an arbitrator is allowed to block discovery if they want to do so. And if an arbitration ruling is contested in the courts, it really is up to the judge(s) whether or not any form of discovery will be allowed.
In many ways, it was fortunate that Judge Berman forced the NFL to release the Tom Brady appeal hearing notes (against the NFL's objections). And without them being released, we would have ever had definitive proof that Roger-the-Dodger had lied in his arbitration ruling.
Anyway, this is all water under the bridge now as the damage has already been done to both Tom Brady and the Patriots.