FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) – Tom Brady smiled away the Tuck Rule on the way to his first Super Bowl victory, flashing that dimple-chinned grin that said, “I had it all the time.”
The New England Patriots’ illegal videotaping. His name popping up in baseball’s steroid investigation. Shenanigans with the NFL injury list. An out-of-wedlock child with the actress he jilted before marrying the world’s richest supermodel.
Nothing stuck to Teflon Tom.
But the league investigation into the deflated footballs used in this year’s AFC championship game might do what none of the other controversies and near-misses could: tarnish the legacy of Tom Brady, a four-time Super Bowl champion and the title game’s reigning MVP.
“What I see is that he goes from being ‘Tom Perfect’ to ‘Tom Not-So-Perfect’ in some people’s eyes,” Marc Ganis, president of sports business consulting firm SportsCorp, said Wednesday after the release of the NFL’s report on the scandal that came to be known as “Deflategate.”