Brady thought he could destroy evidence, in this case his cell phone, and get away with it.
He might ultimately get away with it depending on how this nonsense plays out in federal court, but until such time as the suspension is reduced, Brady more than deserves this inconvenience and the accompanying hit to his formerly pristine reputation.
The Patriots, of course, won’t skip a beat. They will split their first four games at worst and then make another Super Bowl run when Brady gets back (unless he retires out of shame, of course, which is unlikely). They once went an entire season without Brady and still managed to go 11-5, let’s not forget.
But the golden-boy quarterback with the supermodel wife will never live down this Nixonian evidence-tampering caper, especially among non-New Englanders who once had at least a grudging respect for the four-time Super Bowl winner.
As a lawyer friend of mine put it, “You don’t have to ‘hate’ Brady to see he’s almost comically guilty.”
Worse, says New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro, Brady made empty-suit commissioner Roger Goodell almost a sympathetic figure by showing him nothing but disdain.
By letting the coverup dwarf the crime, Brady forfeited any chance for leniency from Goodell.
Time to start remembering Faust as a success
Every time the name Gerry Faust comes up, the tendency is to think of failure.
And it shouldn’t be that way.
Yes, history says the Dayton native laid an egg as Notre Dame’s football coach, resigning under fire in 1985 after five seasons with a 30-26-1 record. But this is the same Faust, now 80, who won five state titles and produced seven undefeated teams at Cincinnati Moeller High School from 1962-80, compiling an incredible 178-23-2 record.
Long before Notre Dame fans broke out the “Oust Faust” bumper stickers, nobody seemed better suited to coach the Fighting Irish. It had been his lifelong dream. Sadly, for whatever reason, that high school dominance never translated to big-time college football.
Faust was back in his hometown Tuesday night, speaking at Carroll High School and the University of Dayton, his alma mater. He lives in the Akron area, but as he told Dayton Daily News reporter Marc Pendleton, coming home is always special.
Bengals owner ready to admit his team has a past
Every year at this time, at a pre-training camp luncheon at Paul Brown Stadium, Bengals owner Mike Brown sits for lengthy interviews about his team and its future.
Tuesday, much of the questioning focused on the past — as in, why don’t the Bengals ever honor theirs? They are the only team without a Hall of Fame, a Ring of Honor or anything else suggestive of tradition.
They did go to two Super Bowls in the 1980s, after all, and I can think of a few teams, including the other one in Ohio, that would wallpaper their stadiums with that kind of history if it belonged to them.
So Brown shocked many with his answer, telling Dayton Daily News columnist Tom Archdeacon he now plans to honor some past greats (Anthony Munoz, Ken Anderson, Boomer Esiason, etc.) at a stadium seemingly allergic to nostalgia except for its name.
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