Tom Brady Shoot Down Reports He Was Going to Bail on His Job With Fox I Never Believed in the First Place

Frank Micelotta Archive. Getty Images.

What I'm presenting here is a story I could very easily ignore like a guy asking for money at an intersection. But I'll address it anyway. Not for my own sake, but for the benefit of that kid out there who reads Barstool and dreams someday of growing up to write short form articles about sports, celebrity culture, and sexually charged scandals. 

Here's my advice, kid. Next to forming letters into words and words into semi-coherent (let's not overstate it) sentences, is gauging the difference between blog-worthiness and non-worthiness. There's no formula for it. It's not science. It's instinctual. It's about trusting your gut. Let me prove it with an example. 

Over the last 48 hours, a story went viral. At least a half dozen people sent it to me. At least a half dozen other sports sites I visit were all over it. But I deemed it unworthy of my precious time. To revisit the analogy, I rolled up my window, casually turned up the volume on my system, and stared straight ahead. 

Said story was based on "reports" that Tom Brady was turning down an emperor's ransom from Fox Sports to sit in a booth for three hours on a Sunday, and talk about what's happening in the distance in front of him. Dig down a couple of inches under the headlines, and the "reports" all came down to this:

To be clear, I have no beef with Andrew Marchand. He too has the spark of humanity and deserves to say whatever he chooses and apply whatever sort of math he sees fit to Brady's chances of accepting a 10-year, $375 million sinecure for doing what comes naturally to him. But that doesn't mean I follow Marchand down the path of what he's claiming like the sheep on all these other sites. The hours in my work day are too valuable for such a thin line of reasoning and wild speculation based on nothing.

But what is worth my time is me reminding you of how right I was to save myself the trouble. Because Marchand's report everybody else bought into has been blasted out of the sky by the one person (besides me) who knows it's horseshit. Brady himself:

Boom. Chalk another up for your old pal Old Balls. 

And as Brent Musburger would put it at the Little League World Series, for all you youngsters out there, let this be a lesson to you. Not everything is a story. Not everything is blog worthy. Unless you were right about something you felt in your heart was utter nonsense. Then write about that. For the good of not only you, but the public you serve. Have a great weekend.