NEW YORK – Across Wednesday morning here in United States District Court, Judge Richard M. Berman peered down from the bench and tried to make sense of the NFL's disciplinary system.

He asked questions of the NFL's lawyer, Daniel Nash. He teamed up with the NFLPA's guy, Jeffrey Kessler, to ridicule how the NFL conducts business – "outstanding observation," Kessler comically noted to the judge at one point, like they were co-stars in some buddy movie.

He expressed exasperation, confusion and outright mockery at the NFL's defense of its four-game suspension of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for either being generally aware of other people deflating footballs, or actively participating in it, or not cooperating, or, well something, or everything.

View photos Roger Goodell's four-game suspension of Tom Brady is under fire in federal court. (AP) More

"There has to be some basic process of fairness," Berman said at one point, but the truth – and the crux of the case – is that maybe there doesn't.

The NFL's defense, as Nash kept pointing out in the face of a double-team of repeated hostile questioning by Berman and dramatic presentations by Kessler, is that it doesn't matter if the league's system is terrible, unfair, nonsensical, rooted in bias or, at its core, heavy-handed. Since it was collectively bargained with the union, league commissioner Roger Goodell can, in theory, be completely wrong based on the inaccurate findings of a bad investigation and no one can do anything about it.

"We had a hearing and the commissioner gave a verdict that is final and binding," Nash said.

The NFL may very well be correct on that. Berman may very well go against what appears to be his instincts and rule in favor of the league, essentially concluding that the NFL won this case, or any case really, when it whipped the union in the last lockout.

What exactly, though, did it really win?

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In exchange for the right to suspend Tom Brady for a quarter of the season, the NFL opens itself up to justifiable criticism, widespread distrust and pronounced anger from employees, customers and even the aggrieved Patriots owner, Robert Kraft.

It has also delivered scenes like this, a federal judge, himself a former corporate in-house counsel, sitting in the NFL's preferred forum of business-friendly Lower Manhattan, just steps from Wall Street, repeatedly flogging the league and throwing more fuel onto a media firestorm eight months into its roar.

Is all of that worth a system negotiated so Roger Goodell could play judge, jury and mid-trail rulebook rewrite man?

This is how the NCAA used to operate until the organization became so untrusted and unpopular it finally looked in the mirror and began at least modest reform to make the system fairer to all parties.

The NCAA has a long way to go but it recognized the burden of being the bully is, if nothing else, bad for business.

Labor negotiations can be hard-nosed, but a good deal, like any deal, is one where both sides get something. And a good judicial system is one based on procedures, protections and fairness; one based on reasonability, not the unyielding quest for conviction. This is true if only because it preemptively minimizes the complaints of the convicted. A flawed system actually turns the guilty into heroes and everything collapses on itself.

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