DON’T BE NAIVE: TOM BRADY WILL BE A POLITICAL PAWN, TOO, AT FOX

For $375 million, CEO Lachlan Murdoch says Brady will be an NFL analyst and a brand “ambassador” — and if Fox News is all about leaning right and re-electing Trump, isn’t Brady part of the strategy?

    Much as Tom Brady tries, at his wife’s behest, he cannot separate his football profile from politics. He is too integral to the American ethos, the 199th-pick outcast who won seven Super Bowls, crashed the barriers of age and health to maintain quarterbacking predominance into his mid-40s, thumbed his nose at Bill Belichick and won without him, sustained a long marriage with the supermodel who bore his children, turned TB12 into a lifestyle brand — you know who he is, right?

     He’s the bro who never grew old, the one dude who actually does have it all, the most envied male in the land. All of which makes him much more valuable to Fox Corporation than the entirety of his future endeavors as a lead NFL game analyst. When CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced this week that Brady is joining his company — after his football career, whenever that might be — he assigned a curious title to his new hire’s job description. It went over the heads of most sports media, but it explains why Brady will command a preposterous $375 million over 10 years.

     “An ambassador,’’ Murdoch called Brady, who will dedicate himself to “client and promotional initiatives” within the company.

     Let’s not be naive here. As the enabler of Tucker Carlson and all things Fox News, Murdoch isn’t committing outrageous fortunes to an untried sports commentator without having a specific, heavy ulterior agenda. As another contentious presidential showdown looms, Brady is his show-off puppet for the dedicated tens of millions who watch his news network, lean right, vote Republican and still embrace the idea of Donald Trump returning to the White House. Wouldn’t Tom Brady, who is aware of every particle that enters his daily sphere, recognize the Murdoch-Trump link? Wouldn’t he know about Lachlan’s conservative leanings, how he described Fox News as “loyal opposition” to the Biden administration, how he attended a recent book party for Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr?

     Of course, Brady knows.

     And he took the lucrative deal anyway, allowing us to draw conclusions about his political persuasion. LeBron James played a massive role in the last election, convincing enough Black voters to take down Trump. Brady won’t be outspoken like James, and I doubt he’ll show up on Fox News, but the “ambassador” role isn’t just about meet-and-greets with advertisers.

     He’ll dispute any political connection regarding his next career, swearing that he’s just another Hall of Fame quarterback who wants something to do. You might say, hey, didn’t Brady divorce himself from Trump five years ago? Didn’t he choose not to visit the White House with the New England Patriots, which prompted a Trump tantrum aboard Air Force One, a scene followed by the President’s refusal to mention Brady’s name at the team’s White House ceremony? But by now, we’re all reaching for Dramamine, dizzy from Brady’s waffling in matters of Donald J. Trump.

     As recently as the months before the 2016 election, he kept a “Make America Great Again” cap in his locker, quick to praise Trump publicly as his “good friend” and golfing pal. But his support for Trump waned after he was voted into office, despite the President’s close ties to Patriots owner Bob Kraft and Belichick. Brady’s wife, Gisele Bundchen, wasn’t pleased with the public divide over his perceived alliance with Trump. So Brady kept a distance, missing both the 2017 and 2019 visits to the White House and explaining at a press conference, “I’m not talking politics any more guys, I’m just not. I’ve got other things to worry about. … I just don’t want to get into it, I really don’t.”

     Later, he acknowledged, “I talked to my wife, and she says I can’t talk about politics anymore.’’

     When he returned to the South Lawn to greet President Joe Biden with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last year, it was assumed Brady had canceled Trump. He went so far to compare pre-game doubters of the Bucs, who’d been home underdogs against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV, to Trump’s claims that voter fraud swung the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.

     “Not a lot of people, you know, think that we could have won. And in fact, I think about 40 percent of the people still don’t think we won,’’ said Brady, cracking wise.

     “I understand that,” said Biden, keeping it light.

     So now, a year later, Brady is the highest-compensated front-facing employee of the broadcast company that will try to re-install Trump or, if circumstances demand, elect Ron DeSantis — who just happens to be the polarizing governor of Florida, where Brady rents Derek Jeter’s old place in Tampa and owns a mansion north of Miami. The Fox deal is no coincidence, my fellow Americans. Brady also is a hired political gun, just as he was a hired football gun for the Bucs.

     Beyond that agenda, Murdoch wants Brady to be a brand-propper for his waning sports division. On the football side, the hope is he’ll bring 10 years of Viagra hits to a drooping presence in show business, an operation that sold most of its key assets to Disney two years ago, then lost its 20-year NFL broadcast tandem — Troy Aikman and Joe Buck, for a collective $165 million over five years — to ESPN.

     Bart Simpson, John Madden and “Glee” aren’t around anymore to drive the buzz. In fact, who watches Fox for anything but football? So Murdoch, who inherits this “Succession” narrative from a patriarch who might not recognize the place anymore, decided he needed a weapon.

     To save face. To flip the bird at Disney. To piss off Aikman and Buck. To save Fox Sports, maybe. So the CEO made an ego splurge, revealing the Brady agreement during a corporate investor call.

     Above all, he made a political statement to all of us.

     It’s Murdoch’s money, his legacy, But forgive me for wondering if this is akin to Kendall Roy grasping for fool’s gold on the TV series “Succession,” when he succeeds father Logan atop dysfunctional Waystar RoyCo. Maybe Brady’s presence fortifies the Fox News audience, but there are plenty of influential Democrats asking why he’s working for Murdoch. Americans who love Tom Brady really love him, but some don’t like his wishy-washy stances, his Deflategate scandal and his general Bradyness. Hollywood power players should be monitored closely the next two years.

     As for his football analysis, is Brady really such a cultural powerhouse that he’ll automatically lure viewers? When Tony Romo started this top-this, nine-figure madness for booth analysts, the resulting musical-chairs frenzy didn’t guarantee every former quarterback would succeed. While Romo entertained with his fun-game-companion charm, Drew Brees has been a flop because he wasn’t always prepared for assignments. Not even Tom Brady can just show up and be a hit. Audiences are too demanding, so scrutinous that some interceptions would be forgiven more easily than a major booth gaffe.

     If you’ve ever been around prominent TV executives — and I have — you know many are megalomaniacs who exist to one-up network rivals when, truth be told, most fans don’t care who’s working the game. They watch the best matchups regardless of the broadcast crews, reacting only after a screwup. Nonetheless, NBC felt a need to push out Al Michaels — still at the top of his game as an all-time game caller — for the fresher, younger Mike Tirico. Fox grew itchy and decided to break up Aikman and Buck, not realizing their friendship was so strong that Buck would follow Aikman to ESPN. The movement prompted Amazon, the streaming newbie, to snag Michaels and pair him with Kirk Herbstreit, heretofore an ESPN college football analyst. This is what happens when media companies invest a combined $113 billion into NFL deals. An arms race turns into a needless run of splurges.

     Fox looked like the loser of the bunch.

     Then Lachlan Murdoch lost his mind, listened to his ego, squeezed the power of Fox News and threw $375 million at the TB12 brand.

     The good news here, I suppose, is that Brady won’t be running for office in his football afterlife. He once said running for a Senate seat was one of his “craziest ambitions.” He’s too smart for that now, instead taking the megamillions of the craziest man he might ever meet.

     When he officially leaves football, not even he knows. He already has retired once this offseason, returning 40 days later, flirting with the Miami Dolphins and settling with the Bucs for another Super Bowl flirt. “It will be a stellar and exciting television career,” Murdoch said, “but that’s up to him to make that choice when he sees fit.”

     That’s the most stupefying element of this astonishing story. Tom Brady is making Fox Sports wait, Fox News wait, Murdoch wait and the country wait until he’s ready to replace a helmet with a microphone. Hell, he could play until he’s 50, as he has suggested. If it all seems haywire, maybe it’s because America is haywire, too.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.