No matter which team you are pulling for Sunday if you were listening to a question answered by Patriots quarterback Tom Brady this week, it just had to cause you pause.
And given the bravado and ego around the Super Bowl it is a good thing I had saved the interview on my DVR because I probably would not have believed it.
The record setting Brady seemed temporarily off guard when he was asked “who was your hero.”
He paused, and then repeated the words: “My Dad,” he said almost faintly, then looked to answer further but he didn’t.
He just stared back and repeated the answer as if to give it more credibility. “Yeh my Dad,” he said again as the interview ended.
And while he didn’t quite appear to have a tear in his eye, I’m not so sure but I know one thing he felt quite vulnerable as if he had revealed a part of his soul or maybe his heart that he didn’t want anyone to see and had to intention to share further.
With everything that is going around us especially this week and where even sports pages are filled with controversy Brady’s answer seemed so pure and unadulterated, so genuine and kudos for the question that brought such an honest response.
I’ve been unusually interviewed – much actually to my chagrin – over the last year and I can say I was not extremely pleased not only to be the subject but to feel the interviewer was seeking to lay open my soul.
My heart you grabbed, my soul not so much.
After some 40 years of asking the questions in every imaginable area of journalism, I don’t favor the shoe on the other foot.
And now I understand when someone I interviewed would tell me: Well you know it never comes out completely right.
What? Are you kidding me?
That’s what I always hoped to achieve and you’re telling me you expected me to make mistakes.
I confess in 15 years on the Missoulian staff I made plenty and usually was in trouble for it. I always pushed it off that I wrote more than 300 stories a year and that was why my copy sometimes was rife usually with spelling errors.
Anyway because of Brady-Go Pats!
Now I confess I should have been more careful-Oh that’s right I’m still doing this.
Just sayin
