Will Brady be taking the Soul Train?

Tom Brady, quarterback for the undefeated New England Patriots is doomed. When I say "doomed" I don't mean that the Pats are ripe for a loss or that Brady will suffer some sort of a debilitating injury, no I mean doomed, like when one spends one's after-life in a fiery underworld, surrounded by pitch-fork bearing goblins. That kind of doomed.

A delusional friend of mine who I will call "Harry," is convinced that Brady is in league with the devil. Harry is a lifelong Ohio State football fan and counts himself as one of the school's most distinguished alumni, although he has never accomplished anything of note in his lifetime. Harry hates anyone who has ever attended the University of Michigan, an institute of learning of which Mr. Brady is truly a distinguished alumni.

As evidence of Brady's secret pact with el Diablo, Harry points back to a snowy Ann Arbor day when Gary Moeller was ousted as the head football coach at Michigan. It was on this day that a fiendish plot against humanity was hatched by none other than Lucifer himself.

Moeller had succumbed to the evils of liquor (oldest trick in the devil's book) and was booted following an altercation at a local bar. To hear Harry tell it, Moeller's dismissal swung the door wide open for an all out blitz by the Prince of Darkness.

In Moeller's place Michigan installed Lloyd Carr as head coach, a man described by Harry as "an unholy minion, and the devil's best recruiter." Sometime during the 1997 season, Coach Carr approached a fresh-faced innocent from sunny California and began bargaining for the lad's soul. The boy was the team's seventh string quarterback with little hope of cracking the starting line-up. Carr offered the boy fame and fortune beyond the boy's wildest dreams in return for the player's mortal soul. The boy would win Super Bowls, date super models and would even impregnate a beautiful movie star (out of wedlock) without feeling the wrath of the public and the press. Some poor schlep named "Pacman" would create a series of clever diversions, covering all of the boy's misdeeds.

Negotiations went on for months. The boy wanted it all and he wanted it now, yet Carr preached patience.

"Mr. Mephistopheles assures me that everything will change for the better in due time," said the Coach pushing an ancient legal parchment before the boy, "just sign here, I promise that this deal is even better than the one that Jeter kid signed with us a few years back." Grabbing a blood soaked pen, the boy scribbled his endorsement.

Years passed and the boy toiled in obscurity, until one November day when his opportunity arrived. The New York Jets, a team only the devil could love, knocked the Patriot's starting quarterback out of the game and forced the boy named Tom into the game. Only the Jets could ruin there own future by making a bone crushing tackle. The Evil One has a strong sense of irony I guess. The Jets have not won a division title since that fateful day.

The rest of the story is still being played-out, you all know the details. Harry despises every moment of Tom Brady's success, yet takes comfort in knowing that someday, sometime in the future, Satan will come to collect his due and that fresh-faced boy named Tom will end up riding the Hades Express on his way to infernal regions.

I know I speak for Harry when I say, go Giants!