Madonna? Harry Potter? Churchill?
Buccaneers veteran quarterback Brady may be beyond compare
The arc of Tom Brady’s career — his rise to Super Bowl mainstay as quarterback of the New England Patriots and now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — reads as if it were a folk tale.
An unwanted National Football League orphan out of college is consigned to a woebegone, frosty football hamlet. Something akin to a miracle — a near-death experience by a coworker — vaults him from obscurity into his dominion’s brightest spotlight, where he slays a two-touchdown favourite to win the Super Bowl. Next, this one-time nobody wins two more Super Bowls.
He has it all: fame, fortune, a goddess for a wife. But he is also controlled by a Svengali-like mentor (the Hoodie), who draws him into a secretive clan known for outlaw tactics. As its ringleader, Brady is demonized outside his kingdom, the fiefdom of Dunkin’, and is briefly banished by the princely overlord, Roger the Goodell of Park Avenue.
Brady plots his revenge, leading a patriot army to three more championships, achieving deitylike status signified by mythic comparisons of him to a mountaintop goat. Alas, in time even Brady’s powers diminish and he appears ready to be dethroned. Then, in yet another twist, Brady spurns his crafty swami to launch a new crusade in a foreign land where Ponce de León once sought the Fountain of Youth. Imbuing a bunch of football wannabe-greats with Brady wizardry, he claims another kingdom, from which he plots utter sovereignty. Quite a story, right?
Folk tales gain their popularity for being universally applicable. So we wondered, are there other fields in which a Tom Brady-like figure exists? Whose storied life has been comparable? In the worlds of literature, politics and business, who is their Tom Brady? In the Bible? Theatre? Greek mythology? TV or music? Does Tom Brady have any analog?
Like everything else related to Brady, opinions clashed. Imagine Alexander the Great in a sword fight with Madonna.
For example, in a chat room created to discuss which fictional character, or historical figure, might be an apt comparison to Brady, the first response typed was “Harry Potter.”
The second reply: “Voldemort,” the literary saga’s villain. OK.
On second thought, a roll call of experts from myriad fields was consulted — with entertaining results.
The filmmaker and author Gotham Chopra, who made Brady the subject of a 2018 documentary film and of a ninepart documentary series set to air later this year, suggested Brady was two conflicting biblical figures, David and Goliath.
“He’s the ultimate underdog who came out of nowhere,” Chopra said. “But, with all the success, over time he turned into Goliath, which is sort of interesting.”
Hunter R. Rawlings III, a classics scholar and the former president of the University of Iowa and Cornell University, said there was no perfect fit in history for every part of Brady’s life narrative, even in mythology, but he found a link to Alge e
“He never lost a battle, though fighting against Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Afghans, Indians and countless others,” Rawlings wrote in an email.
Rawlings also noted, for those who believe that Bill Belichick is pivotal to the Brady story, that Alexander’s childhood tutt or was none other than Aristotle. Alexander was also occasionally despised.
The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author who frequently writes and comments
religious and spiritual topics, said the parts of Brady’s narrative with the most striking historical similarities were his career comebacks or revivals.
“I do not, however, think he’s exactly Lazarus,” Martin said.
Martin believes the most obvious comparison in the Bible is King David, who Martin noted led a “very complicated life and was clearly seen as someone w revered leader of the people.” King David conspired to kill Bathsheba’s husband, the soldier Uriah, by having him placed up front in battle and then abandoned to the enemy.
“He basically has him assassinated, and people are obviously upset with that,” Martin said. “He is a person who’s not perfect but nonetheless beloved in his area. And his people knew his flaws better than anyone.”
Martin, whose book “Learning to Pray” was published this week, also suggested Pope Francis as a possible parallel to
ady, because he did not ascend to the papacy until he was 76. “Pope Francis is not married to a supermodel,” Martin said. “So that’s where the comparison slips a bit.”
After warming up with David and Goliath comparisons, Chopra mentioned Muhammad Ali and Lebron James as cultural figures similar to Brady, and Madonna because she had persevered. complished.”
Chopra, who has remained friendly with Brady, also told a funny story of a recent walk with Brady on the Great Wall of China. Two women passed by, and one excitedly recognized the quarterback. The other woman did not understand why he was famous until her friend said: “He’s Gisele’s husband.”
“So, he’s super grounded,” Chopra said, laughing.
Finally, James Shapiro, a renowned Shakespeare scholar at Columbia University, said he could find no one like Brady among the thousand or so charaa
cters in Shakespeare’s plays, though there is a reference to a “base football player” in “King Lear.”
Shapiro instead saw a distinct parallel in the centuries-old play “Doctor Faustus,” about a man who makes a deal with the devil, selling his soul in exchange for 24 years of having his heart’s wishes met. By Shapiro’s calculation, such a deal for Brady would date back to his days riding the bench at the University of Michigan.
“Which kind of makes sense since that’s when things turned around for him, almost miraculously,” Shapiro wrote in an email. “It makes you wonder, no?”
Such a deal could expire not too long after this weekend’s Super Bowl.
“But,” Shapiro conceded, “that’s a Giants fan speaking.”