Politics and Football

The NFL season ended today in pretty dramatic fashion, with the New England Patriots coming back from a 28–3 deficit in the third quarter and pulling out the win in overtime 34–28. It was probably the best Super Bowl game of my lifetime and had me on the literal edge of my seat for most of the last quarter and a half.

The man in the middle of it all was Tom Brady, quarterback for the Patriots and now the only man to ever win FIVE Super Bowls as a quarterback (Charles Haley played on five Super Bowl winning teams). It was an amazing performance, vintage Brady, and it’s hard to forget sometimes that he is 39 years old and has been doing this for 16 years now.

But Brady, coach Bill Belichick, and Patriots owner Bob Kraft were in the news in the two weeks leading up to the game because of their stated support for President Donald Trump. Brady and Trump have apparently been friends for a long time, Trump was supportive of Kraft when the latter’s wife died of cancer, and Belichick shares some of the same personality traits with the man. The Patriots are kind of the “Evil Empire” of football both for their success and the way that they may have bent the rules a bit to achieve it.

Needless to say, the triumvirate’s support of Trump led to many hot takes, pseudo boycotts, and rooting for the Falcons against these evil men. But I honestly don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Just like I don’t think that every single Trump voter is a spitting image of Trump, I don’t really care that three very wealthy men have had the occasion to be friends with another very wealthy man. Billionaires hang out with billionaires; sometimes they do cool things with their money like solving crises in the world and just generally not being a douche. Others build tall buildings and put their names on them, or use the threat of relocating to get a better stadium deal.

So, congratulations to my favorite football team for winning another Super Bowl. It will be a very long time before we see a team dominate like this again, and we may yet see a few more Brady/Belichick/Kraft Super Bowl wins, and whom they associate with won’t be a big deal to me… unless they start showing outward support for all the crazy policies that the President decides are going to Make America Great Again.

Until next time…