In his second year as a player, Tom Brady won a Super Bowl in New Orleans. In his first year as a broadcaster, Brady will be working a Super Bowl in New Orleans.
Appearing on the Let’s Go! podcast, Brady was asked by host Jim Gray whether he’s rooting for the Chiefs to make history by becoming the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row.
“Well, I’m broadcasting the game, so I don’t really have a rooting interest per se,” Brady said. (That would be very different, of course, if his Raiders were playing.) “The only thing I root for in these situations are great games. I will say if the Chiefs win, I will be very happy for them. I mean, what they’ve achieved is unmatched. And I think that’s cool because people always hated on us for so many years. And I didn’t understand it because all I did was like, we try to do things the right way, we try to go out there and compete for our job and win. And there’s an excellence that I appreciate about people who are doing other things at really high levels because you understand the commitment that it takes for them to do what they’re doing. And to be in this country and to not cheer for excellence is beyond me. . . . It’s incredible to see this team withstand all the adversities they faced over the course of not just this season or last season, the year before, they just plowed on, nothing’s distracted them. They’ve just continued to push forward and win a lot of games.. . . It’s gonna be a terrific game because there’s a lot on the line for both teams.”
Ultimately, every broadcaster (and viewer) hopes for a great game. An exciting game. A game that goes down to the wire — and that (like last year) possibly trickles into overtime.
We all want to witness history. But it’s also human nature to grow weary with the same teams always playing in and/or winning the Super Bowl. In the past five years, we’ve seen 49ers-Chiefs twice and we’ll now see Chiefs-Eagles for a second time. Former Commissioner Pete Rozelle grew dissatisfied with a small cluster of teams running the league in the 1970s. He knew it wasn’t good for the growth of the sport for only a few to compete for championships.
Still, in an age where the rules are more conducive than ever to parity, some teams have figured out how to dominate, year in and year out. It was the Patriots for years, and they passed the baton seamlessly to the Chiefs. Even with the Chiefs winning three, and going for a fourth, the NFC has been commandeered in recent years by two teams, too.
The problem is that certain bad teams stay bad. Which makes it easier for the good teams to stay good. And for the best teams to keep making the tweaks necessary to rule the roost.
We’d all like to see someone else get a turn. Until someone else earns it on the field, however, the foreseeable future likely will consist of more appearances from the teams that have cracked the code on contending at a high level, while many of the others are still trying to figure out how to lace up their cleats.
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