Brady the bad d
Patriots quarterback is a full-on cheat who swanks his wealth, writes Ma a
OPINION: Tom Brady is Richie McCaw without the humility. The rest of the world would cheerfully knock Sir Richie as a cheat, but they also respected and admired the great All Black. Brady is not McCaw. He is a real, full-on cheat who swanks his wealth and epitomises everything that has soured about the American Dream.
Anyone who cares about sport has to be rooting for the Eagles in tomorrow’s Superbowl. The Patriots are not just hated because they win so often. They are hated because they have tried to fix just about everything and everyone connected with American Football.
The Patriots have blown up the NFL commissioner and blown down the footballs. They would do anything for an edge.
And the preening popinjay who fronts this outfit is Brady. He knows that the Patriots are hated, so this week the 40-year-old Brady has happily used his family to manipulate public sympathy his way.
Nobody in Boston has noticed because half the city is in the Patriots’ pocket.
A few days ago two radio hosts on a Boston radio station called WEEI were discussing Tom vs Time, a Facebook hagiography, episodes of which are being released in the run-up to the Superbowl.
The title is the only good thing about a treacly series made by a man with the unlikely name of Gotham Chopra. The rest is slop. It’s promotional candy for something called the TB12 method, a sort of lifestyle training programme embraced and pushed by Brady.
One of the radio hosts was less than impressed, and was being fed by the other; ‘‘I loved episode one and I’m looking forward to episode two.’’ ‘‘It was Patriots porn.’’ ‘‘I did not use that phrase, you did.’’
‘‘I know. I was hoping you would though.’’ ‘‘What did you think?’’ ‘‘It was fine.’’ ‘‘Jesus.’’ ‘‘It was OK.’’ ‘‘Just fine. Come on.’’ ‘‘I thought the first scene was so staged where Brady’s like in the kitchen, his kid’s being an enormous little pissant.’’
The station, knowing that the Patriots represents its bottom line, then suspends Alex Reimer for saying the kid is being an annoying little pissant.
Brady appears a couple of days later on a show where the hosts verbally grovel and figuratively paddle around the moat that once surrounded a Brady mansion.
Brady says: ‘‘You know, I tried to come on this show for many years and showed you guys a lot of respect. I’ve always tried to come on and do a good job for you guys.
‘‘It’s very disappointing when you hear [the comments about my daughter], certainly. My daughter, or any child, certainly does not deserve that.
‘‘I’ll obviously evaluate whether or not I want to come on this show again.’’
And America’s supine, right-on media starts throwing blocks for Brady rather than at him. Reimer is cast as pariah.
Brady then climbs up on his high horse, for which he needs a very long extension ladder, and nobly says that he doesn’t want Reimer sacked. Oh, please.
This is ludicrous. Every parent who has had a child knows that at some point their kid has been an annoying little pissant.
Reimer didn’t call the kid a pissant, he just said he was behaving like one. And it was fair comment.
Brady, the Patriot Kardashian, is the one who is out of order. He has sold his kids’ privacy for a promotional Facebook video and then expects his family to be beyond comment.
But Brady has always played by a different set of rules. When his Super Bowl jersey got swiped, the FBI tracked it down in Mexico.
Hello. Can you imagine some poor black dude in Atlanta telling the police his favourite jersey had been stolen and wondering if the FBI could track it down for him. He would probably be arrested for wasting police time.
But this is the world of Tom Brady, a tonsorial world of evolving hairstyles; a celebrity world of pregnant film star girlfriends traded up for supermodel wives; a turtleneck fashion world of selling your sole to Ugg and your wrist to Tag Heuer. In Brady world, anything goes. Tawmmy says on Tom vs Time: ‘‘When you’ve been doing something for so long, you don’t see just tape, you see the depth of everything. Reading body language. Reading movements. How do you know when the guy’s going to blitz. The guy may just have a little tell like a poker player. How do you know?’’
This is the point where every American who doesn’t live in Massachusetts replies: ‘‘You cheat, Tom, you cheat.’’
The Patriots will never escape Spygate, the scandal that engulfed them in 2007. The Patriots started spying in 2000 and they spied on everyone, in contravention of league rules. Patriot employees would don media photographer bibs and secretly film other teams. They would steal playbooks so often that other teams used to leave fake ones. They jammed the coach/ quarterback radio feed on big plays.
They beat the Steelers in the AFC Championship game and handwritten diagrams were later discovered of the Steelers signals.
‘‘Oh, they knew,’’ said Hines Ward of the Steelers.
They were also ready and waiting when the Rams ran some unusual plays in that year’s Super Bowl having crashed the Rams pregame walk through.