Michigan, NFL legend Tom Brady addresses problems with current college sports landscape originally appeared on The Sporting News
Former Michigan and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady may be, arguably, the greatest football player of all time, but he overcome a series of obstacles to place himself in the running for that distinction.
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At one point, Brady was the seventh quarterback on the Wolverines’ depth chart before starting the final two seasons of his five-year college football career. He famously went on to be selected with the No. 199 overall pick in the 2000 NFL Draft and only became a starter with the Patriots the next year after Drew Bledsoe got injured in the playoffs.
Since then: seven Super Bowl rings, three MVPs, two Offensive Player of the Year nods, three First Team All-Pro seasons, 15 trips to the Pro Bowl, and dozens of league records that stand to this day.
Safe to say, Brady knows quite a bit about adversity and the benefits that can come from it. He also believes it something modern college student-athletes are avoiding in an era dominated by NIL and the transfer portal.
“There were so many lessons that I learned in college about competition, about growing up, about responsibility and accountability, about team, about decision-making, about work ethic, about leadership,” Brady said on an episode of “The Joel Klatt Show” posted on Aug. 11. “All of those sustainable traits that I learned at Michigan — through not only my doing, my experience, but watching some of the other incredible men that I got to be a part of on that team and teams that I was a part of — for my entire life, I can look back on that and be grateful.
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“I didn’t go to three different colleges. I didn’t leave college when it seemed like I wasn’t gonna play. I wasn’t at college to do anything other than have a great college experience, to go to school, to have camaraderie with my teammates and to compete at a high level. That’s really where the focus was,” Brady continued. “At a young age, that’s where I think the focus needs to be. And the commercialization of what’s happened in college sports, I wonder whether many kids these days will learn those sustainable traits that, I think, are invaluable to their life and life experience.”
Brady went on to say that finding a “quick dollar” has incentivized young athletes to prioritize chasing money instead of developing skills that can help them down the line. He urged parents and coaches of even younger athletes to reinforce the ideals that were central to his collegiate experience.
“Whether it’s football, or whether it’s business, or whether it’s teaching, or law school, or medical school, or a trade, whatever you want to do — you’re going to have to go through hard things in your life. You’re going to have to make tough choices. And the value isn’t always about the last dollar,” Brady said. “All of these things that are happening in college sports, we’re prioritizing the wrong things. We’re valuing the wrong things.”