Football season is still a month away, but news of its players are already creeping into the news cycle. And for some, it’s worse than contract negotiations.

Since the beginning of this year, rumors have been swirling that the New England Patriots, who ultimately won the Super Bowl, had knowingly deflated the game balls past regulation in the AFC championship game against the Indiana Colts. After an investigation, the NFL concluded that the Patriots would be fined $1 million and lose their 2016 first-round pick.

The part that’s still being appealed, however, is whether or not quarterback Tom Brady would be suspended for four games for his involvement. But like other challenges pending in the NFL world, at this point it’s a game of diminishing returns.

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Beall cc
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Beall cc

When the punishment was announced in May, media outlets and Patriot fans alike commented on its “brutal” nature. So it’s no surprise that Brady—who has maintained his innocence throughout—appealed the decision, even taking it all the way to the top, with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell presiding over his appeal. But last week his hope for some leniency from the league were dashed: the NFL upheld the suspension.

For the league, the most critical factor in the decision was Brady’s decision to destroy his old cell phone, knowing that investigators had requested access to text messages that are now lost. And though the NFL is no council of legal experts, their take on Brady’s cell phone is similar to how an expert in e-discovery might see it. As Joshua M. Hummel writes for The E-Discovery Stage:

The rules of discovery in civil litigation do not have any apparent application in NFL investigations and appeals, so it is very interesting to see Goodell’s decision cite much of the same language that the courts use when imposing similar adverse inferences against litigants who destroy or spoliate evidence.  Perhaps by issuing these “sanctions” in his decision, Goodell offered a glimpse of one of the primary arguments the NFL will raise in Court, should Brady bring a civil lawsuit to overturn his suspension. Certainly, the spoliation issue now has to be at the center of Brady’s mind when deciding his next move – to go for it in the courts or to simply “punt.”

Throughout this saga, Tom Brady argued that there was insufficient evidence to show that he was involved in deflating the game day footballs.  As it turns out, however, by disregarding the investigators’ requests for his text messages and destroying his cell phone, Brady let the air out of his own case.  Welcome to the world of e-discovery, NFL.

After that it devolved into a clusterjam of lawsuits. The NFL tried to preemptively strike against the Players Association by filing a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where their headquarters are, while the NFLPA filed an injunction in Minnesota that would prevent the NFL from enforcing the suspension.

According to documents released on Friday, even the judge selected for the NFL’s suit has urged both sides to come to a settlement and avoid lengthy litigation. The two sides have agreed to have a “final resolution” to the matter by the time the season starts.

For the NFL it’s obviously beneficial to avoid prolonged and prominent litigation with one of its biggest stars. But the move is (finally, as some believe) a step in the right direction for Brady and the Patriots. Because although the matter at hand isn’t, at this point, really about whether Brady cheated, the on-going appeals and mounting legal action keeps the issue in the public eye.

Like Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, no one can say definitively whether Brady was actually withholding evidence of wrongdoing, but it doesn’t look good either way. And though the four-time Super Bowl winner will likely be remembered for his achievements, the court of public opinion—now armed with the pervasive reach of the Internet—won’t let him live this down anytime soon.

“NFL stars used to rely on some sort of absolution after enough time had passed from their transgressions,” Jeffri Chadiha writes for ESPN. “Now they’re realizing that being a star also means your punishment in the court of public opinion is far more brutal when you screw up.”

At this point the only thing Brady can really do is prove that nobody can prove he did any wrongdoing. And it’s likely that everyone already knows that—but not in the way he wants.