Tom Fucking Brady

Editor's Note:

This Fegonomics post is brought to you by your favorite Ann Arbor Man. No, not Brady you homer, the one you probably know personally.

This Guy Plays QB

Let me start this off by saying that my primary sports fan affiliation is collegiate. I never meant to become a New England Patriots fan, and I am not happy about the fact that I am. How all this came to pass centers around one man. And that man is Tom Brady. As someone who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan as the child of two parents who both graduated from U of M, I was indoctrinated at a young age to worship Michigan athletes, particularly football and basketball players. Mainly because of the rampant Michigan fandom in my childhood home, I also have very minimal attachments to any of the Detroit based sports teams even though they are right down the road from Ann Arbor. During high school I became a legitimate Pistons fan, but that was mainly related to my own personal interest in basketball as opposed to something internal. Because growing up in Ann Arbor was there really any reason to pick your head up and look down the road at whatever is going on in Detroit when you have Bo and the Fab Five? I think not.

For those of you familiar with being dedicated college sports fans, then you will understand that as players pass through Michigan and onto the NFL, NBA, or NHL I continue following their careers and just generally wanting whatever team they are on to win all the time. I think this happens because it seems like a natural extension of supporting these players at Michigan. After living and dying with someone (at least) once a week for three or four years you really feel like you have a vested interest in their continued success. Also, a nice difference between college and professional sports is that once someone has graduated from Michigan, that is an affiliation that (at least to me, as a fan) stays with them for the rest of their career. The “everything is business and I just want to get paid” attitude of professional sports tends to (for me) really limit the attachment to individual players on whatever team. Another reason that this happens is because, if players leave Michigan and are successful professionally, it obviously makes the school look good and helps with recruiting, the schools profile, etc. So the point is that for a long time I would follow and support Michigan athletes in a general, but passionate, “I just hope you always win” type of mindset for some time. And this is something that applies to all ex-Michigan players, almost regardless of their actual performance while at Michigan (even if their underperforming expectations became a seasonal tradition: see June, Cato).

As I am sure you can imagine Tom Brady was an athlete that fell into the above described category. While at Michigan he won 20 of the 25 games he started, was 1-1 against Ohio State, and was 2-0 in bowl games, including an overtime win against Alabama in the 2000 Orange Bowl (the only BCS game Michigan has ever won). Despite a solid overall performance as Michigan’s starter (especially considering what has been going on recently) Brady’s overall career was considered kind of a disappointment at Michigan. He had a hard time winning over the full support of fans and was seen by many as being less deserving of the starting job than Drew Henson, who was highly touted but two years younger than Brady. So I definitely considered it a surprise when he ended up taking over the starting job for the Pats and they started winning during the 2001 NFL season. But, just like I would for any other ex-Wolverine, I started wishing success upon the Pats and maybe paying slightly more attention to their box score than I otherwise would have.
The amount of attention I was paying to the Pats increased as the season progressed and the team/Brady became more successful. Because of the prominence of the starting quarterback position, by the time of that seasons playoffs Brady was one of the most prominent Michigan grads in the NFL. After leading the Patriots to victory in the super bowl and winning the super bowl MVP, he became the clear cut “ex-Mich foot player who is the most balling out.” Although a relatively unsuccessful 2002 season for the Patriots dimmed his star somewhat, that title was still his and he cemented his claim to it perhaps for the remainder of his career with the 2003 and 2004 seasons, where the Pats went 28-4 overall, won two more super bowls, and Brady picked up another super bowl MVP.

Around this time some pretty important other things were happening. Of note in these circumstances is firstly the fact that as we entered late high school the sports obsession of my friends and I really moved to the next level. This applied to all sports in general, but particularly (obviously) Michigan football. The 2003 and 2004 teams were both relatively successful, and with the realization that they were going to be at Michigan for college, some of my friends started to make the “obsessed college sports fan leap” and follow recruiting constantly, try to keep tabs on individual players progress through offseason workouts, and have constant knowledge/analysis to give about every player on the 2 deep. The other was me (indirectly) choosing to not become one of those people by choosing to go to Tufts instead of Michigan.

So with the profile of Michigan football at perhaps an all time high in my life I descended upon Boston in the fall of 2005. Now, Boston is traditionally considered a great city to live in/near while in college/college aged. Which I agree with. But the caveat is that it is a terrible city to live in/near as a college sports fan. With the exception of BC (whose sports teams I find generally uninspiring/uninteresting), all of the other Boston schools are some combination of small/academic/shitty at sports. Also, any fan support for the Red Sox (which I don’t care about/I think baseball sucks), Bruins (hockey is irrelevant), or Celtics (which only occurs now that the Celtics are good and god I fucking hate the Celtics) is at most irritating and at least not redeeming with me whatsoever.
Tom Brady and the Patriots represented the only ray of hope for me in this situation. It seemed like there could be something there. I loved Tom Brady. I wanted the Pats to win. Other people wanted the Pats to win and like Brady too. It had the makings of a good situation. There was a kind of fundamental difference in how all parties got to that point (I supported Brady unconditionally and therefore wanted the Pats to be successful while other people generally supported the team unconditionally and therefore wanted Brady to succeed) but that was something that could be ignored.

The problem was that at this point in time, Brady and the Pats were in many ways inseparable. This was the point in which the Belichick/Brady/Pats mystique was maybe at an all time high. They had just won 3 super bowls in 4 years. Belichick was a genius. The Pats always found a way to win. And the perception had started to kind of change from “every player on the patriots is a replaceable cog in the machine of winning” to “every play on the patriots is a replaceable cog in the machine of winning except for maybe Tom Brady who kind of makes the whole thing go.” Or at least that’s how I felt. Supporting Tom Brady and being a Pats fan became (even more) indistinguishable, at least in my eyes since Brady was (again in my eyes) the embodiment of the team as a whole. Clearly, I was walking a fine line here, and clearly, things didn’t end well.

Upon reflection, my descent into Patriots fanhood was cemented by the entire events of the 2007 season. There are few ways to reinforce and strengthen some feelings than to have them attacked. And due to the “Spygate” scandal of that season combined with the Pats destroying everyone while Brady was having a historically great season, there were plenty of people attacking the Patriots. And while it wasn’t this way in reality, to me all of those attacks were direct attacks upon Brady. And so whenever the topic came up, I ended up defending the Pats team/organization as a whole. I guess it didn’t have to be that way. I could have said, “I don’t really care about the Patriots, I just love Tom Brady” and left it at that. But alas, I went to bat on the behalf of the Patriots pretty much every time.

By that season’s super bowl, I had a lot invested. A win for that Patriots would have basically but Tom Brady at or near the top of the list for greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. I went into the game confident. And of course, well, I think we all know it didn’t work out. Stomach punch disappointment. This was the point when my unfortunate status as a Patriots fan began to dawn upon me. Because the way that I reacted to that game was something that I was very familiar with, but had only experienced as a reaction to Michigan sports (Michigan’s history of underachieving is pretty well documented. I mean our most legendary coach was 5-12 in bowl games. Wtf). Anyways, after that game I not only had to deal with the disappointment of watching Tom Brady (and the Pats) botch their chance to be historically great, but also had to deal with the fear that I might actually be a Patriots fan.

Looking back it makes sense. That one season had all the elements that could have galvanized my support: epic on field success, a scandal and lots of bad press/character assassination of the team as a whole, and a heartbreaking defeat. If those elements can’t rally you around your team, you may not have a pulse. Unfortunately, the fear that I actually cared about the Patriots was confirmed immediately upon the beginning of the next season when Brady went down with his knee injury. Brady was out for the season and yet, to my dismay, I continued to follow the Patriots and hope they did well. I couldn’t believe it.

Now, there are many reasons that I am upset about becoming a Patriots fan. One of the largest is the need to continually justify to myself how I became a supporter of a team after moving to its city from far away while it was going through an incredibly successful period of time. I mean, as someone who grew up worshipping Michigan sports and athletes, I know how I feel even about people who just cheer for Michigan sports after going to school there. Despite the fact that, really, it makes no sense for me to have distaste for people who go to Michigan and support its athletics upon their attendance, I still think that their fanhood is somehow different from mine because of thoughts along the lines of “I mean, they would have gotten just as in to the sports at any school they went to.” (They would perhaps say to me that they actually went to school at Mich and therefore have a much more true connection to the school and its athletics than I do. They’re probably right, actually, but I am ignoring that.) Having to think of myself as one of those type of fans for the Patriots, is definitely at least slightly troubling. The other is the unfortunate fact that, in almost all cases, adding another team to the list of the ones you care about generally also means adding more things in your life to be disappointed by. I mean, only one team can win every year. Just mathematically the odds aren’t good. Sure enough, the Pats missed the playoffs last year and seem to be underachieving this year. I am upset by both of those facts. And even more upset that I am upset about them. And whose fault is all of this? Who led me down this path? There is only one man to blame: Tom fucking Brady.