Everyone knows that tailgating before the game is a must these days. Drinking and getting your colors on is just as big as sitting in the stands and cheering on your team. And it appears that Tom Brady is encouraging these actions. Brady’s advice to fans for the upcoming season opener: “Start drinking early… Get rowdy…. A lot of time to get lubed up and cheer for the home team”. It’s wonderful to see that Brady still relates to his fans, and understands their mindset.
Brady shows no remorse for his comment as he has yet to admit to his mistake or apologize for it. Why try to cover up a statement as true as this one? The fans job is to get rowdy and cheer, and for some, what better way to do it than with a little liquid courage? Brady may not be rescinding his comment, but the PR department for the New England Patriots was all over his mistake.
Brady’s rash comment was quickly spun by the PR department, and they produced this little nugget, “Stay hydrated, drink a lot of water, be loud, drink responsibly”. While yes, it is important to stay hydrated and drink a lot of water as stated, I highly doubt that drinking lots of water will produce the rowdiness that Brady was speaking of. For the PR department to produce this kind of comment following what Brady said is just offensive. It appears as though they are trying to convince us lowly fans that we didn’t understand the blatant message behind Brady’s words.
Brady may be in touch with the mentality of the fans, but these days the drunken fans are getting more and more rowdy, causing big problems around the country. Fans have been behaving badly in what seems like an endless stream of fights, beatings, and tasings. Statements like these from professional athletes are not going to help the situation, but rather just spur on more fans to consume alcohol and possibly create more fan on fan violence. While Brady may not be sorry for his statement, others are wondering how he could say something like that with all the events at stadiums recently.
In the end it all comes down to the fact that alcohol is a big part of sporting events these days, and monitoring that alcohol consumption is not currently an issue at stadiums. Fans are free to get hammered and get rowdy to cheer on their teams. Whether or not that alcohol lead to the recent altercations at stadiums is not known, but one could guess that it was probably involved somehow. While Brady is encouraging drinking before games, the rest of us have to worry about whether or not we will be safe at the games. So it seems as though Brady understands drinking, but doesn’t quite understand that the rest of us are worried about our own safety.