#81 – Tom Brady Sucks at His Job”

[00:00] Buen dia, mi gente, and welcome to La Vida Más Chévere, de Childfree Latinas, the only Spanglish podcast for childfree Latinas y Latines, helping us liberate ourselves from the toxic cultural brainwashing we all grew up with so that we can design our best lives instead. I’m your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato.

[00:24] With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend and me liking football and everything, let’s talk about one of football’s biggest darlings. Whether or not you know anything about football, there’s probably a name you’ve heard before, Tom Brady. You might also have heard that he is the greatest quarterback to have ever lived.

[00:45] If you don’t know anything about football, the quarterback is the guy throwing the ball. He’s kind of the de facto leader of the team, if you will. I’m not going to go into deconstructing Brady’s career here, just know that he’s very, very good. He’s won more games than anyone else, including seven Super Bowls, like this weekend’s game.

[01:03] And it could have been 10, but we’ll get back to that. So why am I talking about a rich white guy today? Because there’s a lot we can learn from this celebrity about ourselves. I know it’s weird. I usually don’t do this, but trust the process. There are seven different ways Tom Brady can teach the rest of us mere mortals a thing or two.

[01:25] One for each of his Super Bowl rings, which again could be 10. And I can already hear you resisting this. But he’s a rich white guy with all the opportunities life has to offer rich white guys. I’m not a rich white guy, so what does this have to do with me? Whew! Look, Brady, despite everything you may have heard, isn’t perfect.

[01:47] Despite his current accolades, 20 years ago, no one gave a single shit about him. Don’t believe me? You hear a lot about players who are drafted in the first round to go play in the NFL, right? Brady wasn’t. He was drafted last in the sixth of seven rounds in 2000, there were 198 men picked ahead of him.

[02:11] All of them considered better choices than the skinny kid who played at Michigan. 198! If he was a real villain, that would be the beginning of his origin story. That’s where it would start. Yes, Brady has more Super Bowl wins than any other quarterback. Like I said, seven. But he didn’t win every single Super Bowl he played in.

[02:33] In fact, in 2008, when his team had an otherwise perfect season, going 18-0 into that big game, they did not win. My team, the New York Giants, did. And then Brady and company lost to that same team again in 2012. And then in 2018, Tom Brady once again lost to another NFC East team, who coincidentally is also playing in the Super Bowl this weekend.

[03:00] Go Eagles! Ugh. Anyway. He retired once and then decided, nah, I’m gonna go back and play. Despite his wife threatening him with a divorce, he decided football was more important than his family. A dubious choice, since he already had a guaranteed job commentating. And then that final season didn’t even get close to winning another Super Bowl.

[03:26] Instead, his team lost in the wild card game, which is kind of like the last chance game to make it into the playoffs. And then they lost that game to a team who hasn’t even won a Super Bowl since the last century. When I was in high school, that’s how long ago that was. So, to recap all of that, not only did Tom Brady fail to win all the games he played, he also apparently sucks at marriage.

[03:53] Who knew? Maybe his wife did. Now that he’s truly retired from playing football, we’re subjected to him every Sunday that there’s a game on Fox. And this is where the title of this episode comes from, because y’all, he is not good at that job. You know, the one that was ready and waiting for him when he retired the first time?

[04:15] He’s so bad at it. Tom Brady sucks at his job. The problem is he has zero charisma and he looks really awkward on television. There’s something about a complete lack of body fat that makes people appear much older than they are, especially in 4k. I have a rich abundance of body fat. If BMI mattered in any way and fat was currency, I’d be a goddamn billionaire.

[04:41] So I would gladly donate to poor Brady’s GoFundMe so he can stop looking like Skeletor. Now look, I don’t think harping on a person’s appearance is kind. So that’s all I’m going to say about that. But he does show up on my TV and he makes me uncomfortable with how he looks and how he sounds. So, now that we recognize that Tom Brady isn’t perfect, despite all the accolades he’s amassed, what is there to learn from him?

[05:09] Here we go. Number one, be careful who you underestimate. Let’s start back at the beginning of Brady’s NFL career. I already told you they underestimated him and let him linger till nearly the end of that draft. Now, was he guaranteed to be drafted? Probably. Maybe. According to Reddit, which is never wrong, he’d probably still go in the same spot today.

[05:34] And yet, at this point, we all know that he was a secret weapon all along. Even as a backup player, he never quit on himself. They called him slow, said that he can’t throw, that he sucks this way, that way, and the next. And yet, here he is, called the greatest football player of all time, the GOAT. Who knew? So what about you?

[05:54] Who are you underestimating? How are you letting people underestimate you? Who are you able to prove wrong? A lot of us are motivated by spite. Even our ancestors were, which is probably the only reason some of our bloodlines have survived this long. Maybe Brady was also motivated by spite. ¿Quién sabe? What I do know is that underestimating me has never gone well for anyone.

[06:21] And I hope that the same is true for you. Look at what’s happening in the tech world right now. The American tech bros, who bragged about their zillion dollar funding, and the idiot who thinks robust companies need “more masculine energy,” are getting their asses handed to them by China, who just cut them off at the knees.

[06:41] China’s Deep Seek is going to suffer from a ton of negative jingoistic and xenophobic propaganda in our media. But they basically built an AI model that’s better, uses fewer resources, and is open source, so it’s available to anyone, without paying the exorbitant $200 a month that ChatGPT and OpenAI wants you to pay them.

[07:04] And our tech boys are pissed, because they were too busy comparing their dick sizes to actually be innovative. When they say Americans are fucking lazy, the tech bros are the prime example of this. They grew fat and lazy, got high on their own supply, and then failed to lead. So someone else filled the space.

[07:25] To quote Pretty Woman, underestimating China was a big mistake. Big! Huge! Okay, I’ve said all that and I’m very aware that we are underestimating Tom Brady as a commentator right now. I got that.

[07:39] The second thing we can learn from Tom Brady sucking at his job is to embrace the freedom to be bad at things.

[07:47] Brady wasn’t a great football player when he left college for the NFL. We’ve already established that all the teams agreed there were 198 other players who were more valuable to their respective organizations. All 32 teams said, nah, we’re good. 198 times. Obviously, in hindsight, they were wrong. But do you think that in any way dissuaded our Tomcat here?

[08:15] You might be thinking, Paulette. He’s an elite athlete and I get tired putting on mis pantuflas. What does that have to do with me? Mi amor, do you think he just woke up being an elite athlete one day? No, he worked at that. He wasn’t great at that job when he started that either. Tom Brady has sucked, or been underestimated, at multiple jobs here, but he had enough determination and grit and maybe even a little bit of spite, maybe a lot of spite, to prove everyone around him wrong.

[08:47] Even now, he’s not good at the commentating. He’s really bad at it. There’s zero rizz there. If there’s anyone whose job should be in danger of being given over to AI, it’s this one. But has any of this, the fact that he is regularly irritating football fans with his lackluster delivery, his dumb jokes, last week they were making fun of him for constantly saying the word stud, has any of that made him quit?

[09:13] Hell no! He’s taking all kinds of media training classes, hitting up his old buddies like Tony Romo for advice. He really doesn’t want to suck at the job, but he does every week. He’s getting incrementally better each time, but it’s like watching a baby deer learning to walk and he’s doing it all very publicly every single week.

[09:36] If he’s able to do that, well, everybody’s watching, why are we, the regular degular folks, afraid of failing? Why don’t we all instead embrace this freedom to be bad at things? I did an episode about this already, and I think I’ll do another one in the future. But it’s a real privilege to be new at something and embrace not knowing how to do it.

[09:59] Because as adults, we feel, we’ve been brainwashed to believe that we should know everything. That we should be good at everything. That saying, I don’t know, is the highest crime. But come on, why don’t we embrace being new? Even being bad and becoming a student again. The thing you have that Brady doesn’t count your lucky stars is that your public domain, your footprint, is so much smaller.

[10:27] Sure, you might be learning something new within a group, but you’re not doing it in front of 18 million people every week. Our struggles are much more private. And don’t most of us prefer it that way anyway? So, get used to being bad at things in your private world. Give yourself permission to suck at stuff, too.

[10:48] And if you don’t already, you should follow Bernadette Joy Cruz Maulion on Threads. And watch as she’s learning how to swim in her 40s. I love that she is unapologetic about not knowing this thing that most of us learned as children. And she’s just enjoying herself. As she should. I’ll put a link to her latest post about it in the show notes.

[11:10] And we’ll get back to swimming in a bit.

[11:13] So let’s move on to number three. This one’s gonna include a little math. Did you know that math used to be my favorite subject right up until I hit college? That’s when statistics just made my brain say, Nope, this is where I quit. Anyway, the next lesson on our journey with Tom Brady and how much he sucks at his job is just because you’re good at X doesn’t mean you’ll be good at Y.

[11:36] No matter how closely they are related. So the math equation is X doesn’t equal Y. And going back to our last lesson. That’s okay. Just because Tom was good at playing football never meant he was going to be great at talking about it. Because he’s not. Say it with me. Tom Brady sucks at his job. But the people at Fox certainly hoped he would be good at it.

[12:01] They invested in him to be good at it. They know that a shrewd student of the game, a guy like Brady, who stubbornly studies game tape to improve his own game, would likely rise to the occasion. Heh heh heh! But remember, the real quote is “under pressure, we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to our level of training.”

[12:25] Brady just doesn’t have enough training yet, so he’s struggling. He’s had decades worth of training for football, but he’s only been at this new thing that’s football-adjacent for one season because on field skills are not the same ones needed in front of the camera for an entire game. I am a better speaker than Tom Brady.

[12:45] I have way more charisma than he does. But if an organization was looking for a heavy hitter to pump up their audience and leave them with a great message, you know if the options were between me and him, the mere name recognition is going to beat out this little indie podcaster every single time and twice on Sundays.

[13:03] Except for those who can’t afford him. So, if you have less than half a million dollars in your budget for a speaker, know that I can deliver the same style of presentation to your audience for a fraction of that cost. You can reach out to me through the links in the show notes. So, what’s the lesson here?

[13:22] That just because you’re good at a lot of things, it doesn’t mean you have to be good at everything. You will be bad at some stuff, as noted in the first lesson. And just because you’re good at one thing, if you try a related thing, the skills may not transfer over perfectly. So, you may not be good at that other thing.

[13:38] X doesn’t equal Y. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner you recognize, we all had a day one at new things, at this thing that you’re trying to accomplish. This is your day one! Then, the happier you’ll be at the level that you’re starting at. Just enjoy it.

[13:54] Number four is about swimming. What about swimming, Paulette?

[13:59] First, you started talking about football and then Tom Brady and how he sucks at his job, and now we’re talking about a completely different sport? Hang in there, my friend. Remember, trust the process. Continuing on in the same vein as being new and embracing that not all our skills will transfer over when we’re new, let’s chat about doing.

[14:19] In the last few episodes, we’ve covered how to use your voice for resistance. And if that’s too much right now, then that being in community is also a form of rebellion. How doing something often keeps us from feeling helpless. There’s a joke that says something like a tourist is in New York and they’re looking to get to Carnegie Hall.

[14:40] So they stop someone and say, “sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” And the answer is practice, practice, practice. Why is that? Because the only way to make it in this world, is to do the thing you want to become good at. Just like Tom Brady continues sucking at his job every single week in front of 18 million people at a time, every single week is another opportunity to do, to practice his new craft, the one that he sucks at right now.

[15:10] But he sucks slightly less every week, and is better than when he started at the beginning of the season. Because the truth is that you can’t learn to swim without actually jumping in the water. See, here’s where the swimming comes in. You can read all the books, watch all the YouTube videos about it. You can even start dreaming about it.

[15:30] But until you are actually in the water, learning to float, learning to breathe, learning to kick, and learning to move from point A to point B without drowning, you aren’t going to actually learn how to swim. Much less become a swimmer. Do you see what I’m saying? Even if you’re bad at a thing, you have to try.

[15:50] And you have to keep trying and trying and trying and eventually you’ll become a little less bad at it. You’ll become a little better at it. That’s how it goes. You gotta practice, practice, practice. And that leads us to our next one. There’s no shame in seeking out mentors to help you practice.

[16:09] Meaning, number five.

[16:12] Everyone needs a coach. There’s no shame in having one. Tom Brady couldn’t have led all of his teams to all of those Super Bowls without a coach. Multiple coaches. He even hired himself a health coach with whom he developed his crazy TB12 program where you can’t eat tomatoes or have any joy, but you can get shredded like Skeletor if that’s your goal.

[16:36] My point, mija, is you don’t have to do shit alone. Ever. But also, be careful who you seek advice from. Tom didn’t know the first thing about commentating. Well, maybe he did. Who knows? It doesn’t appear like he did. And there’s scores of articles out there about how he sought out a lot of media training.

[16:55] From who? Media training coaches. This is also why Tom Brady reached out to the other guys who used to play football and now have jobs commentating as second careers. Because the quote, you “don’t take advice from people who have never been in the arena,” has never been so fitting. A stadium is a literal arena.

[17:17] We’ve gone from watching gladiator fights to football games. How many guys know what the transition is like from leading a team to sitting in front of a monitor coming up with constructive or colorful comments to give the audience while we’re all watching football? Only a few of them have been in that arena.

[17:36] And those few guys who do know probably had tons of advice for Tommy Boy, because everyone needs a coach. Whoever brainwashed you into believing that you have to stand on your own, all alone, and learn how to do things all on your own, all alone, really robbed you of the belief, the fact, that not only can you be bad at things, not only should you have a support network to cheer you on while you’re learning new things, when you’re stumbling, but that you deserve to be able to ask questions, to get advice from someone who knows better than you, how to do the thing you’re trying to learn. Get a mentor, get a coach.

[18:17] Remember my guest, Rena Martine, she talked about the same thing in our interview back in episode 40. How you don’t take advice from people who haven’t gone through what you’re going through. And oh, you know what? She’s an intimacy coach. That episode was all about shame. It’s like I have a theme here on this show. Dismantle shame. Divorce yourself from shame. Everyone needs help. That’s why we get in community.

[18:44] Speaking of which, number six. This one’s gonna be a little heavier because number six is We have to say what the fuck to impostor syndrome. Tom Brady is friends with the Felon in Chief, the Felon of the United States, or FOTUS, if you will. A literal felon is president! And Tom Brady, the guy who cheated his way through games with deflated balls, is his friend.

[19:10] And if not his bestie friend, they definitely run in the same circles. In fact, Brady’s making a play at becoming a billionaire by buying into the Raiders franchise right now. What does this tell you if not birds of a feather flock together? In other words, they all have a community they belong to. Of course, they don’t call it that because it’s not manly, probably.

[19:32] I don’t know. They probably call it whatever white supremacist word they can come up for it, like the old boys club or a fraternity. Take your pick. But it exists nonetheless. Community. That’s what the last episode was about and I explained why it’s so important. Go check it out. As a community, these guys can protect each other from anything, like imposter syndrome.

[19:55] They have each other to bolster and cheer for each other. Again, they probably don’t recognize it that way, but that’s what it is. When you feel supported by your clique, by your community, by your circle of billionaires, where does your imposter syndrome go? Out the goddamn window. It defenestrates itself.

[20:15] What better way to get over your own imposter syndrome than having your own cheering squad? Again, it comes back to community. You know what else this little bromance between Brady and the Felon shows us? Maybe cheaters do win after all. You cannot convince me they didn’t cheat in this last election. And we know that Brady cheated with his deflated balls.

[20:37] It was called Deflategate and he was suspended for four games. So even the greatest of all time doesn’t believe he can win on his own merit all the time either, huh? Hmm. I wonder what they call that. Is it imposter syndrome? But also, there’s a literal felon as president! He is a waste of the diapers he sits in and still was able to convince people to vote him into the highest office in the land.

[21:04] A guy with no real skills as we already saw in the first term, a dude who doesn’t even realize that his little executive order tantrums don’t trump constitutional amendments and are illegal on their own. He doesn’t even understand how government works because it’s not a business, it’s a service. That guy has a job, the hardest job in the world, and you’re over here wrestling with imposter syndrome?

[21:28] Are you fucking kidding me? By the way, I don’t curse on stage if a clean speaker is what you’re looking for, but I do on this podcast because it’s my show. Mi amor, what the hell are we doing letting our inner voices make us feel like less than when men with less talent, less charisma, less knowledge, and even less curiosity than you are running this place?

[21:49] There’s literal clowns in the White House making a mockery of our country every single day and we, you and I, are worried that we aren’t good enough? What is that about? That’s brainwashing. And we need to decondition ourselves from it because it does immeasurable harm to both us and our communities.

[22:11] Here’s a little side tip about strengthening community. Speak the names of your members in rooms you have access to that they don’t. Give them access to places you have the privilege of occupying. Just like Tom’s name was batted around the football shows before he even retired. Just like people assumed he would be the next great commentator, and maybe he will.

[22:31] Like I said, we’re underestimating him too. Speak those names in your groups as well. Give your community a leg up in the spaces you get to occupy. Helping others get over their own imposter syndrome, it’s a great way to help yours disappear. Push it out that window. Defenestrate! And that brings us to the last thing.

[22:54] The final lesson we can pick up from Tom Brady, who sucks at his job, is if literal clowns with bad makeup are running this country, If a robot can tell you what’s happening during a football game without a single shred of personality to him, if these menaces aim to strip all of our rights, to punish us with fear, to keep us too angry or upset, or fighting with each other to notice what’s really going on, the real problems?

[23:18] Then the question, mi amor, is, what do we have left to lose? Nothing. If it’s all gonna go down the shitter anyway, what mark would you want to leave with your life? What would you want to be remembered for, or better yet, what would you do for yourself, for your community, for your spirit, if you had nothing left to lose?

[23:41] How would your life be different if you weren’t afraid of failure? What choices would you make if you knew you were going to succeed? If you were Tom Brady at 44, who was underestimated at the beginning of his professional career, only to come out as the best player to have ever lived, what would you do differently?

[24:04] And then my follow up question to that is, why aren’t you doing that? I think I know. And next episode, I’ll cover it.

[24:13] So let’s recap. I’m underestimating Tom Brady right now. I recognize he’s gonna get better. Or he won’t, but they’ll still keep paying him a bajillion dollars anyway. Like I said, the Super Bowl is this weekend.

[24:25] Tom will be there! You can assess his commentary skills to see what I’m talking about, even if you just watch it for the commercials. But I would love for the Eagles, a team that I am primed to hate both as a New York Giants fan and a disgruntled former resident of the city of Philadelphia, I would love for the Eagles to disrupt Kansas City’s three-peat attempt.

[24:46] Not because I’m callous or mean spirited. Again, I’m supposed to hate the Eagles. But just like in 2008 and in 2012, I do love me a good upset. So, whoever wins this weekend, Tom Brady will probably still suck at his job.

[25:01] Anyway, the seven Super Bowl rings of lessons that we can take away from Tom Brady sucking at his job are, 1. Be careful who you underestimate, including yourself. 2. Embrace the freedom of being bad at things. 3. Just because you can do X, doesn’t mean you’ll be good at Y, because X doesn’t equal Y. 4. Like swimming, you can’t learn to do something without actually doing it. 5. Everyone needs a coach once in a while, even the greatest of all time.

[25:37] 6. Say what the fuck to imposter syndrome, please. And 7. What if you acted like you had nothing left to lose? Looking back, it seems obvious that Tom Brady would become the GOAT and end up on TV like his bestie, Gronk, even on the same station. But do you think he knew that way back when? Do you think he knew he was going to have to sacrifice his intimate relationship, his marriage, his kids for it?

[26:03] Would he have done anything differently? Would you? You know what’s funny? I usually craft these episodes from the end back. I have a conclusion I want us to work towards, so I reverse engineer the path to that topic. I work as if I already know that future, and I bring it to my present, which is the actual topic of the next episode.

[26:25] So stay tuned. All the episodes mentioned in this one will be in the extended show notes on PauletteErato. com, so go check those out. And that’s a burrito.

[26:35] Hey, mira, if this episode made you feel some kind of way, dígame. DM me on Instagram, or send me a text. You can do that right from your phone. If you want to be a guest on the show and put your story out there too, check out the guest form on my website at PauletteErato com slash guest. Yep, just my name, PauletteErato. com slash guest. Y no se te olvide que hay más perks when you join the newsletter. Todos estos links están en los show notes. Muchísimas gracias for your support, y hasta la próxima vez, cuídate bien.