It's scandalous

 Whether you are talking about the SMU scandal of the 80s. or Deflategate in the early 200s; scandals usually share a common theme, nobody is going to put their job at risk unless somebody higher up has told them to.

Though the SMU scandal is so far back, it is still one of the most devastating scandals to concern sports in the USA. The managers were giving cars as gifts to entice college players to sign for SMU, when the scandal came out, SMU was penalized by having no home games for eight years, and no draft picks for five years. At the time, SMU was one of the top three colleges in Texas.

Of course, it doesn't always work this way, as one Italian MP discovered in 1982 when Mario Chiesa was arrested for paying a bribe with marked money, he went to his party for backing and got refused. Chiesa's reaction was to say "Okay, we'll open the tin of worms as I have no backing."

He caused the Mani pulite scandal.

Mani pulite means "Clean hands," in this case nobody got backing from anywhere as everyone was looking after themselves, and the result was the downfall of the government.