Imagine there’s no football. Maybe California needs Tom Brady

By Bernie Quigley - 12/08/10 10:06 AM ET

Note: For the past 15 years I’ve watched the headlines on Dec. 7 and 8 as a barometer of the times. Pearl Harbor was Dec. 7, and on Dec. 8 John Lennon was murdered in New York City. Each year Pearl Harbor wins. This year there was barely a mention of Pearl Harbor, and John Lennon is on front pages everywhere. There are three op-eds about Lennon today in The New York Times. It is a seismic shift, in my opinion, marking the beginning of the century, the millennium. Lennon will be remembered in time as the most important English person to date since Victoria. For more on John Lennon, Google “Quigley in Exile.” But after the football game Monday night Tom Brady is more on my mind.

If there is a lockout next year, America will be left without its basic matrix; that which holds us together and apart, in harmony, in tension. Brady should spend the year without football in his home state, where he is building a house, and plan his life ahead, starting with governor of California. A few years ago when he first flabbergasted the football world with those quiet eyes over the grille, like the famous Buddha eyes of Katmandu, and that steadfast arm, he said he hoped to do more with his life than just “throw a football around.” He said he was thinking of going into politics. I’m sure Mitt Romney, who borrowed his logo for his 2008 run from the Patriots, would help. He lives out there now. And Brady’s broheim, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who lives next door.

Belichick can help out here with his old bud Doug “Drop Kick” Flutie, who campaigned for Scott Brown, helping to put New England back together. Much to be done to tailor health insurance to the region as Gov. Romney intended it.

A thought came to mind in those many times when so many of our national and local politicians including Obama and Biden and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush seemed to need help. They seemed to need a life coach or a professional mentor. The thought would occur, What would Tony Dungy do? Look what he did for Michael Vick. Imagine what he could do for Joe Biden.

Then listening to David Eisenhower talk about his new book, Going Home to Glory, about his great ancestor, and recalling the integrity and determination that won the war and saved the world, I began to wonder what it was exactly Dwight D. Eisenhower did to make him get that good? What did he do before the war?

The answer: Football coach. And he was a star halfback at West Point until he injured his knee.

Belichick is old-school New England Taoist. “We really take after our coach, and he says, ‘When you win, say little. When you lose, say less,’ ” said Brady after the game. Tao te Ching, No. 82. And these guys are playing football?

Belichick is one of us old-school men-don’t-hug New Englanders. But Brady, much as I wish he would be ours always, is California’s, and he is California’s finest. CA is new, we are old. Brady is new. And the political arena today is filled with brand-new ideas, some great, some terrible. And as in every possible case of new ideas, they need new people. And those who champion great ideas bring them to life and are ever remembered as avatars of the new thinking. ’Twas ever thus.