The American sports appetite has ample room for the superficial — dramatic predictions, conspiracy theories, fantasy leagues — but not so much for the complex. Indeed, issues requiring deeper thought trigger alarming bouts of lunacy, illustrating how our inconvenience for complexity is nearly an epidemic.

Such is the case — pause here to heave a sigh — over the recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit that reinstated Tom Brady's four-game suspension. Bloggers, bloviators and blatherers are, once again, breathing into brown paper bags pronouncing Brady's innocence, all while the ruling from three judges didn't come close to proving it, disproving it or even addressing it.

The scope of Monday's ruling was narrow, addressing only whether the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement gave (and gives) NFL commissioner Roger Goodell the right to dispense such forms of punishment. Period. It offered no more or less insight into Brady's innocence or lack thereof, despite all the moral posturing. There was no moral posturing whatsoever from the judges. Just an assessment of law.

They ruled that, yes, Goodell was (and is) within his rights, based on what the CBA reads. They wrote:

"There is simply no fundamental unfairness in affording the parties precisely what they agreed on. ... If it is seriously believed that these procedures were deficient or prejudicial, the remedy was to address them during collective bargaining. ... Arbitration is a matter of contract, and consequently the parties to arbitration can ask for no more impartiality than in the method they have chosen."

Essentially, that means the Players' Association has nobody to blame but itself for giving a man who has become a tyrant such tyrannical powers. Or as Sally Jenkins wrote in Tuesday's Washington Post, "the CBA is written so lousily that when it comes to Goodell's powers, it effectively ties the hands of judges and prevents them from intervening even if they wanted to."

The opinions of judges Parker and Chin differed from Richard Berman, who ruled in September that the CBA does not authorize Goodell to run an autocracy. Goodell can't be judge and jury, no matter what the CBA's language may imply, Berman said.

Berman, in spite of all the toadies who believed his ruling was Vindication Day for Brady, ruled on the law. He ruled on the process. His ruling was a defeat for the NFL's tactics, not a victory for all the folks who felt the need to stage a hunger strike in the name of Brady's innocence. Brady became a free man at the time because of what Berman believed was the abject incompetence of the most financially successful sports league of them all.

Nothing that happened Monday moves us closer to Brady's innocence or guilt. His innocence or guilt, based on the evidence, is a matter of opinion. The judges ruled on the law. The court of public opinion rules on guilt and innocence. You believe what you believe. And nothing that's happened this week should change that.

What did Brady know and when did he know it? Opinion.

Are the two equipment room guys patsies or did they act independently? Opinion.

How does the Ideal Gas Law pertain to what happened on a football field more than a year ago? Opinion.

My opinion: I can't take it anymore. Put them all on the same bus and drop them off under a fern in Arkansas somewhere. Goodell is a thin-skinned bully that's lucky enough to have a Players' Association dumb enough to give him more power than Genghis Khan. Then there's the Patriots, who despite years and years of excellence, curiously find themselves perpetually running afoul of the rules. Except, of course, in the eyes of their fans, who adhere to the idea that if they espouse conspiracy theories and persecution complexes loud enough, they all must be true.

I'm not sure the original act ever merited a four-game suspension anyway. The problem now is that by suspending Brady, this story never dies. It becomes this endless confetti gun of horse manure, raining intervals of it on the rest of us who just want to watch football in peace.

Monday's ruling reiterates that Goodell can do whatever he wants. Every player knows it now. What's the sense in upholding a suspension over something that'll be nearly two years old by September? Have mercy on the rest of us, commish. We just want to watch the product not even you can screw up without the daily musings of every yahoo in New England.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.