Tom Brady: DeflateGate suspension, Donald Trump, Jimmy Garoppolo
Tom Brady is facing a possible suspension from the NFL for his involvement in the DeflateGate scandal, with current and former teammates rising to his defense along with one unusual endorsement from real estate magnate Donald Trump. Meanwhile New England Patriots fans are trying to figure out how much faith their have in backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo in case he’s pressed into action for part of the season, even fans around the rest of the league try to figure out how to spell his last name. But is Brady really about to be suspended?
The majority of prominent sports reporters from around the nation have chimed in to suggest that Tom Brady should be suspended in 2015, with their assessments ranging anywhere from one to six games, along with a few outliers asserting he should be banned for the entire season - which would be unprecedented for a defending Super Bowl MVP. That alone raises questions of whether Brady, who is in his late thirties, might simply retire rather than slog through the ignominy of sitting out an entire year.
But even as the public attempts to figure out the most appropriate punishment for Tom Brady, there’s an equal line of debate taking place: how does a proven champion, who is likely to win anyway, end up convincing himself that he has to cheat? And that circles back to the comments made by Donald Trump. Not only did Trump assert via social media that Brady is innocent, he also made clear that the two are friends.
It’s not uncommon for rich and famous people to end up traveling in the same social circles and becoming friends even if they participate in very different lines of work. However, one has to wonder the kind of influence which Donald Trump has had over Tom Brady throughout the years. Trump has amassed much of his fortune by talking investors into sinking their money into unprofitable deals, and then either suing those investors in order to keep them from being able to get what they were entitled to out of the deal, or outright declaring corporate bankruptcy several times in order to legally wash away those obligations. Is this the kind of advice which he’s been feeding Brady?
Of course Trump works within a financial and real estate market in which the laws and rules are largely rigged to allow the rich to get richer, with no real consequence other than reputational, and Trump has never cared what his detractors think of him. But Tom Brady works in an arena where the rules are hard and fast, and the governing body likes to hand out punishments for even minor or arbitrary violations, for public relations reasons.
It’s not the kind of environment in which Trump’s “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” philosophy can end up working. And yet Brady appears to have tried to apply that mantra to his NFL career, breaking rules to gain a competitive advantage which were so minor he may not have seen a difference, and didn’t need in order to win anyway. The old notion of being careful about whom you allow to influence you is one which Tom Brady perhaps should have taken more seriously before allowing Donald Trump’s influence into his life, and it may now cost him in the form of a lengthy suspension. One can only hope that Jimmy Garoppolo never ends up getting Trump’s phone number.
