The Tom Brady Effect- Winning as Morality in America
I’m writing this piece because I need some help. I do not understand peoples’ obsession with winning. I can understand things intellectually, even emotionally, but still cannot fathom the constant desire to win.
Let’s not get detained here with any moral argument. I could suggest until I’m blue in the face and my typing fingers are numb that the desire to win has created more disquiet and violence in human history than any other desire. Conquest is about winning. Is it not?
Let’s also not get detained by any other sentimentality. Fuck that right? Let’s be real and practical. Let’s be doers! Let’s not be wimps.
So why the neurotic focus on winning?
An example that always confuses me- that of Tom Brady, arguably the greatest football player in history. I don’t particularly care for him, but on the occasions I have seen him play, I am continually amazed by his grace and skill on the field. Until this season, Brady played for the New England Patriots, no doubt the most successful football franchise of the 21st century, coached by a scowling and tyrannical figure named Bill Belichick.
Tom Brady doesn’t look particularly athletic nor does he possess the physical skill demonstrated by quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers or Patrick Mahomes. But Tom Brady is a winner. Tom Brady has won six Super Bowls. Six.
There’s more. Tom Brady is now 43 years old; he won his last Super Bowl at the age of 41- the oldest ever for a Quarterback.
The story is amazing and unique.
So what gives? How does Tom Brady, not known for incredible physical prowess, play top-notch football for two decades and continue to turn in championships into his fifth decade?
First of all, there is clearly talent. Second, there his pinpoint accuracy. Third, there is poise under pressure. Fourth, he has played under one of the greatest coaches in football history.
But element five is the one most spoken about. It has to do with the position Brady took with regard to salary. Put simply, Tom Brady never pushed to be the highest paid QB in the league, always settling for “modest” money so that the team could use the savings to recruit other good players. For this, he’s given kudos by fans and pundits alike.
Interestingly enough, he is also given “moral” props for this. To the extent that he forsook money in the service of a nobler cause, he is thought to float on a higher moral plane than others (though of course, his adulatory comments about Trump rankled many.)
The noble cause? Winning.
Yes, winning.
How America thinks about this is beyond curious. A society that venerates wealthy and anoints great status to the wealthy, likes one thing more than money even- winning.
To understand this is to understand America. Years ago, a person of great erudition told me that the idea of being a “loser” — an epithet so common in American speech- is a uniquely American phenomenon. As with so many other elements of American culture, it has no doubt been exported, but it is a quintessentially American thing to refer to those who are down on their luck or otherwise financially unsuccessful as “losers.”
In Brady’s case, the “sacrifice” made was not in any real sense painful. We are talking 20 million a year versus 30. Not to mention the fact that he makes money on the side and has a fabulously wealthy wife.
But in the gilded world of celebrity athletes, his decisions are seen as sacrificial and moral, the latter not a function of the former but instead, as a reflection of competitiveness and a “winning spirit.”
Americans like winners and shun losers.
Surely, there is more to it than a cultural fascination with winning. We cannot separate that phenomenon from American capitalism and the hoary propaganda about “accountability” and “opportunity” key to the American narrative. In this narrative, even the “dream” is about wealth and winning. In the American ethos, a person who has not succeeded- and that too in narrowly defined terms- must be deviant and unaccountable in some way or simply have “made bad choices.” Whatever the reasons may be, they are functions of the individual’s decisions. In the same ethos, those who have succeeded- especially in narrow ways- must have “done something right.” In neither case, do we question the larger dispensation or the sets of social, economic, political, and cultural conditions that might have driven failure or success.
We thus secretly blame “losers” for their state and adulate winners for theirs.
Winning thus becomes synonymous with goodness. Winning is an end in itself.
The Tom Brady Effect should be studied by Sociologists and Psychologists.
That would be a winning bet.
