GLENDALE, Ariz. – What has it come to? A guy who has quarterbacked a team to three Super Bowl championships can’t take up with one of the world’s most beautiful women without attracting photographers? Can’t even limp in peace around Manhattan before his team tries to finish a once-thought-to-be-impossible undefeated season?
It would be hell being Tom Brady if not for a truth he swore yesterday in front of a marriage-proposing Mexican newswoman in a wedding gown; or for the guy in a sorcerer’s costume predicting both victory Sunday and marriage within a year; or the rolling swarms of eye-rolling football writers wanting him to talk about history and the Giants: The quarterback of the Patriots wouldn’t want to be anybody else.
“I wouldn’t change places with too many people,” he said. “I like what I’m doing.”
To prove it, he spent an hour on Media Day appearing to be enjoying every question about his ankle, his loves and his hates, if a little light on the hates seeing as he is assuredly Tom Brady, with a full realization that there are few persons on this earth who wouldn’t want to be him.
“I don’t have too many worst moments,” Brady said. “Everything I do I probably chose to do and if I don’t choose it, I accept it and move on.”
So did Inez Gomez-Mont, whose proposal was polite declined by Brady before the Mexican TV beauty moved on to propose betrothal to Jared Lorenzen and who knows who else.
“Beautiful name Inez,” Brady said. “I’m a one-woman man, but you are beautiful and anyone who would have the opportunity to marry you would be a lucky man.”
No luckier than Brady, since that man does not exist.
“God knows my life has been extremely blessed and there is give and take with everything,” he said. “You have to change the expectations.
“To think I’m going to be able to go out in Boston and just hang out and walk down Newberry Street, it isn’t happening, so you know what? I don’t do it.
“When you have won as many games as we have, it demands a little more attention. Go about your life and try to enjoy it best you can.”
Like Media Day, for instance. Brady came prepared with his own video camera to record the freak show before him and, being no rookie, armed with ways to disarm every potentially-humiliating bomb tossed at him.
“That’s your question, ‘How do I feel about being the stud of the NFL?'” he asked. “I don’t look at myself like that. I just love playing football and whatever comes along with that is great.
“You’re asking ‘What is my purpose in life?’ My God, you know what, I throw a football and I happen to do that good enough to get here and have this platform.
“I don’t think any of us cure cancer. You think about the impact you have on people’s lives and if we can perform some entertainment to change the subject for them a little bit, that’s a great thing.
“We’re all blessed to have the opportunity to live out childhood dreams. All of us wanted to . . . play in a Super Bowl. We are going to remember this the rest of our lives and hopefully use this platform for things truly fulfilling.”
He gets it. And we don’t mean Gisele Bundschen, the rings and, probably, the undefeated season. They’ll always be Tom Brady’s lesser gifts.