One month has passed since Tom Brady's appeal hearing in deflate-gate. One month and Roger Goodell still hasn't announced a decision.

View photos Roger Goodell (R) and Patriots owner Robert Kraft may not be so buddy-buddy right now. (AP) More

Nothing. No upholding the suspension. No reversing the suspension. No lightening of the suspension. This isn't a Supreme Court case. This isn't complicated. It shouldn't take a month of leaving a player hung out to dry, as the biggest storyline going into the start of training camp remains an overblown, self-inflicted soap opera from last season.

One month and Goodell still can't figure out what to do, which somehow isn't really all that surprising since if he knew what to do in the first place the entire story would have been snuffed out in a day or so – or however long it took the NFL to figure out it has no idea, let alone any actual proof, that the footballs at the AFC title game were even all that deflated.

The Washington Post is reporting some owners are trying to figure out how the NFL commissioner can come out of this appearing "credible and looking like he's dealing from a position of strength." They might try encouraging him to just rule on the evidence rather than go with that pipe dream, but whatever.

Meanwhile, ProFootballTalk reports that a "small group of influential owners" are pushing Goodell to uphold the suspension, so it's nice to see some lobbying of the commissioner by rival teams who didn't participate in the disciplinary process.

It's not a coincidence that Brady and the NFL Players Association are left to do their own saber rattling in the media, claiming they'll sue everyone and everything if the New England Patriots quarterback isn't exonerated.

There are three rings to this circus.

It's fairly easy to envision Goodell locked in his office trying to figure out how to get out of a mess in which he put himself, the league and Brady. One month later and he apparently hasn't figured it out … or had anyone figure it for him.

This is truly one of the dumbest scandals in sports history, a molehill the NFL turned into a mountain.

It bears repeating there remains no proof the footballs were even significantly deflated in deflate-gate. For all the curiousness and suspicion from having some Foxborough locker room lackey calling himself "The Deflator" and taking the balls into a bathroom just before kickoff, he may not have even deflated anything.

That should have been obvious to the NFL within a day of the AFC championship game. You'd think the league would have started there.

View photos Tom Brady has a ball tossed to him during warmups before the AFC championship game against the Colts. (AP) More

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