Think of how this looks

When (let's say "if") you ever have to go to court, you certainly don't want to see the other side, be it the prosecutor who is trying you on charges of speeding, or the lawyers for a grocery store you're suing because you slipped on a mess they left in the produce aisle, causing you to fracture your archipelago, shaking hands with the judge before the trial commences, and thanking him for the great time at the Loyal Order of Lawyers Lodge Oyster Roast the other night.

We like to assume that the courts are on the level, and as far as I know, they are.

And even though I hold no truck for the New England Patriots football team, as I find their head coach to be almost Bannonesque in his unsociability and their glamourous quarterback just a bit too, too much, I will not deny that these men are excellent at their work, but I would not choose them as companions for a night of dining and chatting.  Nor would they choose me, so it's even.

And I don't hold with those who say the referees are so awed by the Patriots and their seeming invincibility that they throw the games in their favor. The team plays well in all aspects of the game, damn them. As Michael Strahan said the other night after the game, they seem to have an extra gear they can go to in the 4th quarter of a tight game, a gear they get from experience, and that gear puts them in the winner's circle.

And all that deflated-ball stuff and other stories of the Patriots cheating are all behind us.

Still...I don't think it was wise for the referee of the conference championship game, Clete Blakeman, to go over and pat the Patriot quarterback, identified as a Thomas Brady, on his chest after the game.

Blakeman is a personal injury attorney in Omaha.  You would think that he knows how these things look to the jury, which in this case includes every citizen who doesn't like the Patriots, which as an awful lot of us.

Reading Blakeman's biography, we see he was a backup quarterback in his college days at the U of Nebraska-Lincoln. Perhaps this is his way of basking in reflected glory.

I guess he is one lucky basker, at that.