I happened to walk into the George R. Brown Convention Center behind El Generalísimo. His security detail and about ten league executives were in tow. They moved briskly and all wore dark suits (in lieu of military fatigues). They also looked nervous, perhaps owing to “couch” flashbacks, but the Strong Man was all game face. Several of the questions were at least semiconfrontational. Goodell’s preclenched body would grow visibly more so when selected keywords were mentioned—words like “San Diego,” “St. Louis,” “Oakland,” “concussions,” and of course “Brady.” A San Diego reporter threatened early with a question about “what message the league sends to its fans” when the Chargers can leave San Diego after fifty-six years after the owners can’t secure public money for a new stadium. “These are painful processes,” Goodell said (drink!), and we were off.
New England reporters came eager to relitigate the evergreen topic of football air pressure. The Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy referred to comments Goodell made a few days earlier in which he said it would be an “honor” to hand the Lombardi Trophy to Tom Brady. Brady’s dad, bless the man, took exception. “Somebody that has Roger Goodell’s ethics doesn’t belong on any stage that Tom Brady is on,” Tom Senior said. Tom Junior promptly imposed a media ban on his father.
Shaughnessy also wondered about the commissioner’s two-year absence from Foxborough. This triggered what might have been the commissioner’s most hilarious response of the day, intended or (more likely) not. “If I’m invited back to Foxborough, I’ll come,” Goodell said. Wait, so he was just waiting for the proper invite? That’s what this was all about? I saw Robert and Jonathan Kraft just look at each other.
* * *
—
Later that day, I would take a hiatus from Houston to fly to Boston and visit my father in the hospital. He was eighty-three, had a worn-down heart, and was a few days away from entering hospice care. His name was Miguel Leibovich, an immigrant from Argentina who came to Massachusetts via Tennessee in 1958. He met my mother, they married and moved to the suburbs and eventually divorced. They raised three kids and, tragically, lost one in a car crash—my little brother, Phil, a great sports fan and my best friend; our last conversation was about the Pats beating the Seahawks in a November game in 1985, sealed by a late interception by Fred Marion. My father was not without his demons and, certainly, not without his heartaches, but they were far outpaced by his deep love of family and friends and appreciation for life’s boundless amusements.
He never bothered much with American sports. It made me jealous of my friends who got to play catch with their fathers. It frustrated me that we could never connect over sports, which was something I clearly followed closely and performed well in (as opposed to, say, school). But I sought out some surrogate “American dads” who could fill the gaps for my foreign model—my grandfather in Brooklyn taught me baseball and took me to Mets games, my friend Josh’s dad, Dr. King, took us to Fenway and Foxborough. And Miguel and I developed a lively affinity as we both grew older. We became great laughing friends, would talk for a few minutes on the phone a few times a week, mostly about our respective comings and goings and whatever was going on in the world. I never stopped trying to get him interested in sports.
At the very least, Miguel liked the idea of celebrating victories. Argentina used to shut down for rejoicing after a win in the World Cup, people cheering through the streets, beeping their horns. He loved a party. He loved being part of a community, especially a happy one. He once drove my friends and me to Logan airport at five a.m. to welcome the Larry Bird Celtics as they arrived back from Philly after they beat the 76ers in a big Game 6. In 2004, when the Red Sox were about to win their first World Series in eighty-six years, I was watching the deciding game by myself in an Iowa hotel room. The person I called before the final out was Miguel, though I had little expectation he was watching. He would, at the very least, appreciate that I was calling at a meaningful moment, and that his adopted hometown would soon be breaking out in euphoria—unless heartache intervened, as it does. He told me that if the Red Sox held on, he would race around downtown Boston in his car beeping his horn.
Miguel lived life as if it were a timed sprint through the aisles of a market, trying to fill his cart with as many worthwhile experiences as he could before time expired. He always appreciated the metaphor of a race against time. He once told me, when I was probably too young to hear it, that he never expected to live a long life. He was lucky enough to defy his own prediction, with a big assist from modern medicine. He was never religious and could in fact be quite defiant of any rules that could restrict his pleasures and hostile to any God that could allow, among other things, his son to be taken at such a young age. That might sound self-centered and indulgent, but that was also Miguel. He hated confinement in any form, especially at the end of his life.
My plan was to fly in to Boston from Houston, spend Thursday with Miguel, and then fly back Friday. But I would return only if his condition seemed stable enough to leave him. Or, if not, I would just stay in Boston with Miguel and miss the game. But he had no patience for the second option. No way was I missing the Super Bowl on account of his bad heart, he said. He knew the Pats were playing. He knew the Super Bowl was the ultimate American party—and did I mention that he loved a party? “You only have so many chances for memories,” Miguel would say. “Listen to your father.”
This might be a slight reach of a parallel, but Tom Brady also talked about racing time. In his case, he was racing the standard assumptions of how long a person can play football at his insane level. Brady’s coconspirator in this race was his doctrinal commitment to his “lifestyle”—and to Guru Guerrero himself.
Beyond his TB12 salesmanship proposition, Brady is at his core a killer control freak. My dad was, too. Both were determined, and again lucky, to be able to live their lives in a way that allowed them optimal control over their time and freedom to pursue their zeal to the fullest. That’s about where their similarities ended (and needless to say, Miguel couldn’t throw a spiral to save his life). But there are few privileges greater than having ample time at the helm of a shopping cart.
Mortality takes many forms, and death is only the most literal expression of it. There are obvious parallels between our human fears of death and our desperation to maximize and extend something we cherish—a career, a season, or a passion for something. In a livelihood sense, we’re all athletes. If lucky, maybe we get twenty years to perform at a high level doing something that we love, before something or someone comes along to take it away. Ideally, that love does not come with any long-term health risks, but even when it does, in the case of football players, most will say they have no regrets. No one said the end was supposed to be easy for them, or for anyone, or that it had to come without a fight.
One thing that stood out from my time with Brady was how certain of his philosophies he could seem. This might have been the salesman Brady talking, or just the messianic tone of someone who dabbled in motivational speaking (Brady would headline a Tony Robbins event in 2017, which, to be honest, bummed me out a little when I heard about it). You can’t help being skeptical of anyone hawking answers. But beyond that, Brady could become vulnerable at certain points. Once was when he started talking to me about his own father and his voice cracked. He said he wished Tom Senior took better care of himself. “He says, ‘I’d rather die than not eat ice cream,’” Brady said of his father. “But my dad is the most optimistic guy I’ve ever met. He will meet someone and three weeks later, he’ll think they’re best friends. I take on a little of that. Kraft would always tell me there’s a naïveté to me, you know, like, he’ll say it in a good way, I think.”
Brady went on about how difficult it is to persuade his father to change his lifestyle. “You can’t control what people do, even people you love so much,” Brady said. There was this exchange at the beginning of Super Bowl week as Brady was completing his Opening Night media duties. When
he wasn’t warding off questions about Trump and Deflategate, Brady took a question from a kid reporter named Joseph who was seated on the shoulders of ESPN’s Trent Dilfer. “Many people say you’re their hero,” Joseph asked. “Who is your hero?”
Brady smiled, said it was a great question, and then nearly lost it. “I think my dad is my hero, because he’s someone I look up to every day,” Brady said, and then he stopped and nodded his head as his eyes welled up. “And, uh . . . ” he tried to continue, “just my dad.”
Tom Junior had alluded to his mother’s “health issues” without getting into details. “Yeah, this year my mom hasn’t been to a game this season and my dad hasn’t been to one,” he said. “It is very atypical.” But I was struck that what triggered Brady’s emotion was the mention of his father, the caretaker, and not the parent who was actually sick. The Toms had an unusually close father-son friendship, maybe slightly fraught. I thought of Tom Senior’s recollection of how devastated he was when his pal opted for faraway Ann Arbor over nearby Berkeley, and how Tom Junior was wise enough at that age to realize that this might have been a necessary separation. But clearly their bond had evolved, endured, and has taken some sad turns down fragile roads of old age, cross-country distance, an unforgiving league, and the prospect of the Unbeaten Opponent, mortality.
The expectation was that Galynn Brady would be well enough to travel to Houston for the game. But I had spoken to Tom Senior, who told me that his wife of forty-six years had been suffering from pneumonia and shingles, so it was looking like a game-time decision. Death might be the ultimate game clock that’s beyond our control, but there are worse goals to shoot for than getting to a Super Bowl—or a seventh.
24.
CLOCKS AND SITCOMS
February 5, 2017
By the time I arrived back in Houston on Friday, the city had gone from being a zoo to a party penitentiary. The weekend’s arrival brought a swarm of football merrymakers trying to navigate closed roads and clampdown security checkpoints. I scored a few sweet party invites. I saw some things, such as: Mark Davis at the “Commissioner’s Party” being taunted by the daughter of Broncos owner Pat Bowlen. “I really like the Raiders,” she told him. “Especially when we’re kicking your ass.” Her tone captivated Davis. “I like the sound of that,” he said, and I left the Membership kids to their devices.
Her Majesty of the Shield, Jane Goodell, sarcastically thanked me for “really starting the week out on the right note for us.” She was referring to a story I had published in the Times a few days earlier in which I’d recycled a bunch of unused but newly relevant quotes that Trump had given me for a story a year and a half earlier—a practice known in journalism circles as “composting” (making use of discarded material—very green). “The commissioner is a weak guy,” I had quoted Trump saying. He had also referred to Goodell as “a dope.”
Also composted in the story: Trump criticized Kraft for not suing the league over Deflategate. Kraft did not perform well under pressure, Trump said. He should never have trusted Goodell. “He choked, just like Romney choked,” Trump said of Kraft. Kraft pulled me aside at a pregame tailgate party the league had hosted next to NRG Stadium.
“Did Trump really say that I choked?” Kraft wanted to know. Yes, I told him, though it was a throwaway line from about eighteen months earlier. But Kraft did seem wounded. “Did he really compare me to Romney?” Yes, I said again, but it was in the context of Deflategate—and besides, sir, your team is about to play in another Super Bowl, why are you worried about this? Kraft, who wore an aqua blue suit with pocket squares, shook his head. Even at pinnacle moments, it is always essential to be loved and respected at the most powerful levels. “It was a shock to read that,” Kraft said.
By now I’d been to enough of these quasi-exclusive NFL parties to gain a déjà vu sense of Usual Suspects assembled (and reassembled) in a swamp. I had arrived at a similar impression about D.C. parties years earlier. For a while, you’re a bit dazzled to be in the presence of—and even cultivated by—high-level politicians. But over time, they acquire the sameness of familiar characters going through high-level motions. They are afflicted with the same boredoms, insecurities, hang-ups, and discomforts as the rest of us. Billionaires, commissioners, and Gold Jackets can just as easily become Usual Suspects. It’s all the same sitcom.
Woody Johnson was commiserating about all the disclosure forms he had to fill out after Trump had designated him ambassador to the United Kingdom. His audience was Sam Skinner, a former cabinet official and White House chief of staff under President George H. W. Bush, as well as Roger Goodell’s father-in-law. Johnson wore a bright white Jets cap and had his young sons from his second marriage with him. They kept running up to show off their newest autographs. “Jerry Jones!” one of the boys told him. “Shaquille O’Neal,” the other one one-upped. “That’s great,” the proud father told his boys, and Woody stood humanized before my eyes.
L.A. bridesmaids Mark Davis and Dean Spanos stood together a few feet away from the Wood Man, both wearing white (think of Davis as the bowl-headed Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, with Spanos played by Jeff Daniels). I heard “Dino” getting some “best wishes” for finally getting his Chargers to L.A. He received them with a pained smile, like he was being congratulated for a hernia.
Davis, meanwhile, was fielding queries about the Raiders’ fleeing Oakland. “Is Vegas real?” Shaquille O’Neal wanted to know. It might be, Davis said. “You need a tight end?” O’Neal wondered.
Before getting his answer, Shaq lumbered away to pose for more pictures, leaving me alone with Davis and in need of an icebreaker. As always, I was prepared with an obscure detail. I had just been reading an old book about the NFL (The League, by David Harris) in which Al Davis went off on a riff about how incredible his son’s bar mitzvah was. “I was just reading about how proud your father was of your bar mitzvah,” I said to Mark Davis, who melted when I said this.
“It was a great bar mitzvah,” he agreed, grinning. “It was near Lake Merritt in Oakland. A lot of the Raiders were there.”
* * *
—
“Looking good, Sal,” someone called out to ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio, posing for photos with a bunch of Pats fans waiting to get into NRG Stadium. This seemed a good way to begin a live Super Bowl experience, the visage of Sal Pal ministering to his communicants. I snapped a picture for the Sal Pal photo essay that Belson and I were curating from our various safaris. This will include several shots of Sal Pal’s big face filling TVs over hotel bars.
Super Bowl crowds are made up heavily of fat cats, league types, and others with minimal rooting interest—thus subdued. It heightens the studio feel inside the coliseum, the sense that we’re all extras at America’s ultimate TV production. But something else felt different about this Super Bowl. It had to do with the political moment we were living through, as if the game had become a proxy for our national divisions. Super Bowls are promoted by the league as unifying spectacles. They celebrate competition, brute strength, and branding prowess. But the struggle must always be leavened with fun commercials, booze, and feel-good performances (Up with People used to play at halftime until Pete Rozelle killed the tradition—another mark of his good judgment). This Super Bowl, though, felt less like a civic rivalry—my town versus your town—and more like a theater for a cultural bar fight. Coalitions of the “Us” and the “Them” are inexact, but there was a decided bent in this game of Make America Great Again versus The Resistance; the dynasty rooted on by Richard Spencer and Donald Trump versus the team whose season ticket base is 40 percent black and whose slogan was #RiseUp. In a pregame interview with Fox, Trump again asserted that he has great friends on the Patriots and predicted a New England win by eight points. It all felt like an opening Hunger Game in the broader Trump-era divide. Things were only getting started.
When Atlanta scored first, the reaction on Twitter reinforced the idea of a politic
al grudge match on turf. “America 7—Trump voters 0” distilled this pretty well (courtesy of @NotBillWalton); so did “The Falcons respect an independent judiciary.” I spent more time on Twitter than usual during a game I cared about. Being the Super Bowl, there were ceremonies and longer breaks, thus more time to fill. Plus, as a Pats fan—and everyone knows how this game went—the first half was dreadful, though much of America seemed ecstatic. Twitter also reflected the fact that many Super Bowl commercials were playing to the political environment, particularly as they related to Trump’s immigration orders and plans for a border wall. Once a melting pot of cheesy dips and wagering, this Super Bowl Sunday felt more like a family Thanksgiving during divorce proceedings. Did everyone see that Budweiser ad that followed the journey of company founder Adolphus Busch as he immigrated to America from Germany? Discuss. Apparently it was a pretty woke message from Bud; or, if you prefer, an attempt at liberal pandering. A #BoycottBudweiser hashtag was born by halftime.
“These commercials have been a bonanza of leftist activism,” a Breitbart editor complained. “Two immigration commercials, a feminist commercial, now an eco wacko commercial? Am I missing anything?”
Personally, I was missing something—my football team.
* * *
—
The Falcons led 21–3 at the half. Brady threw a pick-six, his receivers kept getting crushed and dropping passes, and Atlanta’s skill players—orders of magnitude faster than New England’s defenders—were running free.
I hate Super Bowl halftimes. They are endless. Give me more football, ASAP. But this one felt like a nice break from the carnage. Lady Gaga was scheduled to perform. Would she get political? This was a bit of a cliff-hanger—and the game’s result was looking less like one, so we’ll take the drama where we can. It was not out of the question that Ms. Gaga would make some political statement, given her liberal and provocateur proclivities. But she kept it clean, making her entrance into the stadium via suspension wires from the stadium roof.
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