Dr, Oz pinning his hopes on ‘Saint Nick’ to deliver Sunday
Members of the participating teams go into hiding two days before the Super Bowl, which means if you want to talk to a player, there’s only one place to be: Radio Row.
They aren’t Patriots or Eagles, but past, present and future NFLers are among the guests of numerous sports talk shows that have set up tables, couches and more wires than you’ve ever tripped over on the third floor in the Mall of America.
Trying to catch a glimpse through the hundreds of onlookers, a good story subject was finally spotted this Canadian print journalist.
It was Doug Flutie, the most prolific quarterback in CFL history.
When one GOAT isn’t available, why not grab the other, right? Besides, Tom Brady and Flutie were New England teammates in 2005. It was starting to write itself.
Well, there’s a couple of things you should know about the now 55-year-old Flutie:
At five foot 10, he still disappears in a crowd. As he rose from one interview, I deftly avoided citizens and security guards while in hot pursuit. Suddenly, he was gone again, and I knew how Willie Pless must have felt 20 years ago.
Yes, Flutie remains as elusive as ever.
Remembering the credentials around my neck, I cut through the masses and went inside the ropes. Up and down the row I walked. I nodded to Travis Kelce. Said “what’s up” to Devin Hester. Shook hands with Rod Carew. But nowhere could I find Flutie. I was just about to give up when, standing in an expensive blue suit before me, was a Mehmet I’d never met.
That would be the famous Dr. Mehmet Oz, the cardiothoracic surgeon, Columbia University professor, author and, as of Friday, host of 1,500 network television shows.
With a Super Bowl or sports angle, I could scrap the Flutie plan. Who needs the wizard when you can have Oz?
As it turned out, Dr. Oz was a gold mine.
During the first quarter of Sunday’s game, he will be doing a commercial for Turkish Airlines, which had actor Morgan Freeman as its pitch man during last year’s Super Bowl.
He also played college football, as a safety at Harvard. And he grew up in Philadelphia. “I’m a long-suffering Eagles fan,” Dr. Oz said as we sat down at an empty table on Radio Row. “The thing about the Eagles is they’re probably the winningest team in football that has never won a Super Bowl. What’s magical about this year is they shouldn’t be there. You lose not just your top player, but a couple of your top players ... in theory, you shouldn’t have any chance of getting in the big game.
“When football is at it’s best, it’s when the underdog does something because they believe in themselves. That’s what has to happen on Sunday. The Eagles, they shouldn’t have beaten the Falcons, they shouldn’t have beaten the Vikings. But they did.”
With Nick Foles.
“Saint Nick,” Dr. Oz corrected. “Saint Nick.”
Dr. Oz says he has spent a lot of time “studying ” football. He enjoys it — a lot.
“The game is about misdirection, and it’s about brute force,” he said. “One opens up the other. And all of that has always thrilled me.”
He knows both owners, Jeffrey Lurie and Robert Kraft, well.
“They have a very, very powerful relationship with their players,” he said. “The best teams in football are being represented on Sunday.”
As for the Eagles’ suffering, “it’s got to end Sunday,” Dr. Oz said.
In his dream, the Eagles start tight, like they did against the Vikings, then get a break, like they did with Patrick Robinson’s pick-six.
“I think that will give them life and they will take every bit of it that they can get,” he said.
After that, the Eagles will not make the same mistake others before them did.
“They’re not going to give Tom Brady the ball,” he said. “You’d rather lose the game yourself, going for it on fourth down or whatever setting it is, than giving Brady two minutes at the end of the game. He’ll beat you, because he always has.”
Dr. Oz knows Brady on a personal level, too.
“Actually, Tom and I were trash-texting each other a couple of months ago, because we both had a book out at the same time and they both are vying to be at the top of the New York Times bestseller list,” he said. “I was telling him, get out of my lane, and he was saying ‘It’s my lane now.’”
By playing so well at the age of 40, Dr. Oz believes Brady is changing the way athletes will train and eat.
“The power of vegan diets,” he said. “When you walk into a grocery store, you walk into a pharmacy. Tom highlights the fact that he eats vegan and he loves it.
“He’s using new, innovative ways of stretching his body, and strengthening his body, to allow his body to feel like it’s 31, 32, when he’s 40. When he says he’s going to play five more years, what he’s basically saying is my body is going to play until it thinks I’m 37, not until I’m actually 45.
“When you look at how we advance science, most of us think it’s doctors working in their offices with slugs and mice. It actually happens all the time because one person changes the paradox, gets you to think differently about the world that you’re living in. And I think that’s what Tom has done.”
Dr. Oz also had plenty to say about the Turkish Airlines ads and conversations with Oprah he’s had in getting his show to last nine seasons and counting. But I’m running out of space here, and I still have to tell you of our parting.
“Thanks for being a writer,” Dr. Oz said.
Nobody has ever said that to me, I told him.
“I write a lot and I know how difficult it is,” said Dr. Oz.
“There’s a little primer for writing, the strength of writing, I give it to all the faculty at Columbia and all the students. If you can’t write well, then you can never be a leader. That’s what we’re going through now.
“You have to be able to put syntax and thought into words.”
To think I was going to be happy getting a GOAT.