Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady has finally escaped criticism for his past friendship with Donald Trump, but due to the color of his skin, he still can’t catch a break from the Deadspin blog. Race-baiting Rob Parker asserts Brady is merely the “Great White Hope,” not the greatest quarterback of all time.
After Brady won his seventh Super Bowl Sunday, Parker acknowledged that the former Patriots quarterback has won more Super Bowl championships than any single team has won. However, he “knew people would gush all over the 43-year-old Tampa Bay quarterback. It was a natural.” He heard all the claims of GOAT: greatest of all time.
Yet Parker quickly diminished Brady’s accomplishments, gained “whether he was directly involved in his team actually winning the game or not.” So Brady was just along for the ride?
The Parker take-down of Brady continued with the crediting of defensive teams winning more than half of Brady’s titles, including this Super Bowl win over the Kansas City Chiefs. For the record, Tampa Bay’s defense was over-powering, and Brady threw three touchdown passes and posted a 125.8 quarterback rating (the ninth-best rating in Super Bowl history).
“For the Brady fanboys, it didn’t matter. It was all about the ring total,” Parker argued.
Then the strawman argument follows.:
“Enter jumping the shark, going off the rails.
“The next leap was that Brady was the greatest team-sport athlete ever.
“Somehow, Brady had passed Michael Jordan now because Brady has seven rings to Jordan’s six.”
Who’s making that claim? “Some people, or so it seems.” No names are attributed by Parker.
The truth is Brady is the most decorated pro football player ever and the most accomplished quarterback ever. No one believes he’s a better athlete than Jordan, Jerry Rice, Carl Lewis or any of thousands of great athletes present and past.
Nonetheless, Parker hears the Brady talk as “a sinister message” and worse.:
“Plain and simple, it was the propping up of a white athlete over all Black athletes.
“Yes, it felt like the Great White Hope agenda. Especially to some in Black America.”
Parker isn’t done yet with the racial jabs. After mentioning that Bill Russell won 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons with the Boston Celtics, he wrote: “Heck, there are other white players who won in team sports more than Brady. The Yankees Yogi Berra won 10 World Series in New York.”
Parker quotes retired quarterback Brett Favre in debating whether or not Brady is even the greatest quarterback of all time. Favre wasn’t sure in a radio interview.
Also, Parker is reminded of how “This current over-the-top narrative feels like when (white) Larry Bird came on the scene in the NBA. Fans and TV announcers talked about Bird’s play as if he’d invented basketball. There was the feeling that there was a narrative that the best player in an 80 percent Black league was white.”
Dennis Rodman, a Black former NBA player who played in the Bird era, is quoted by Parker for playing the race card about Bird way back in 1987. “Because he’s white. You never hear about Black players being the greatest.”
Parker makes his exit from the race-based post by saying, “For sure, Brady is a great player, hardly the greatest. It’s just some say he is in the hope of convincing others that he actually is.”
Race is often at or near the top of the story lines at Deadspin. One might even call charges of racism “systemic” on the site.
