 Ronn Torossian |
If you don’t know the story, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: during a game, the Patriots quarterback was accused of conspiring with an equipment manager to slightly deflate certain footballs to give him an advantage in the 2015 AFC Championship Game. No one has really been able to adequately explain how a less inflated football could give a quarterback an appreciable advantage, but that question was glossed over in the immediate assault on Brady. Did he or didn’t he conspire? The league certainly thought so, and they dropped the hammer. First leveling, then rescinding, then once again leveling a four-game suspension on one of the best players in the league.
Some fans thought that the suspension was retaliation against the Patriots club that has been dogged by accusations and evidence of shady behavior for years. But the league could get nothing to stick, until DeflateGate. The press and the league made so much hay out of so little substance, that even those who don’t like the Patriots — even opposing fans who love other AFC East teams and despise The Hoodie and Pretty Boy Tom — basically told the league to stop the witch hunt. But they didn’t, and Brady sat out the first four games of the season. The Pats still won, because of course they did.
Now, more than halfway through the season, the Patriots have the best record in the AFC, and Brady took time out to film an ad for Foot Locker poking fun at the suspension. In the ad, two Foot Locker customers come into a diner talking about how “amazing” the sales are at Foot Locker year after year. How could they continue to be so great, they wonder.
Enter Brady, who offers this clearly tongue in cheek commentary: “That’s an unfortunate mindset you got there … Just because something’s great year after year doesn’t mean anything’s going on. Why can’t some things just be great? Starts with questions and then questions turn into assumptions, and then assumptions turn into – vacations … Why would you punish the ‘Week of Greatness’ for something that never even happened?”
Rim shot … exit stage left.
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Ronn Torossian is CEO of 5WPR, a top 20 US PR firm, and one of America’s most well-respected PR executives.
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