Brady's foot stuck in XLII's mouth

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To be honest, and just a little pleased with myself, I have not kept straight which supermodel -- would Patriots QB Tom Brady be involved with a non-supermodel, and another thought, does he assign them Roman numerals? -- has Brady's baby and which has his time, such as it is before another Super Bowl.Until there is a football game, the 42nd such, there will be these kinds of vital concerns because everything between now and next month is fair game, including more than just Brady's love life but his right foot, seen booted and unbooted, without explanation.Now, if Brady really is going to have to beat the New York Giants on one foot, that seems only fair, but we should know.This inquiry was seriously presented to the coach of the Patriots, Bill Belichick, on Thursday, to which he responded that he had no comment, not surprising since he never has any comment about anything.Belichick did add, being uncharacteristically impish, that all would be revealed in the usual injury report on Wednesday of game week.By then, of course, we shall know everything and more, including whether Brady flosses or picks and wears boxers or briefs.Not to exaggerate. One Super Bowl quarterback, nettled over questions about which of his cheeks was getting acupuncture, mooned a news helicopter, revealing, in fact, that Jim McMahon wore neither.So it is that Brady and Belichick and the dutiful media are holding up a grand Super Bowl tradition of making a mountain out of a walking boot, though the media does seem more earnest at its job.One coach, Chuck Noll, actually played along with the press that wanted to be updated on an injury to Mean Joe Greene. Noll offered the news that Greene was "93-3/4 percent ready." The next day, Noll determined that Greene was 1-1/2 percent better than the day before and as time wore on, Noll would just begin every news conference with the announcement that Greene was up a point.Now that's a Super Bowl coach.The thing is, we would never have noticed if Brady were not visiting Gisele Bundchen, inevitably described as a Brazilian bombshell. She's the blonde, I think.The brunette, a Bridget Moynahan, is the mother and the former Brady sweetheart. She was once picked No. 96 among a men's magazine's Hot 100. I did not know where the Brazilian bombshell ranked (No. 6) until forced to research this vital statistic.This is what Super Bowls do to journalists, send them to places where they now have an explanation for the magazines their wives find mixed in with Time and 5280.Nothing is too silly or unimportant to pass for actual news, and somehow the two weeks between games always gets filled with fool's folly.And this particular Super Bowl, of no interest in a competitive sense, can take all the absurdity it can stand, if it never reaches the point of one intrepid inquisitor's pursuit of detail. "Tell me, Jim," said a reporter to Raiders QB Jim Plunkett, "is that blind mother, deaf father or the other way around?"That was at least an attempt at truth, if insensitive (less so than wondering if the Redskins Doug Williams had always been a black quarterback), but the single-mindedness required to survive the hype just kicks in, as illustrated by one quarterback explaining that his wife would not be at the game because she had to feed the baby."Breast or bottle?" came the follow-up from a writer who never looked up from his pad.Brady has apparently reached a level no professional quarterback has achieved since, oh, Joe Namath, a tabloid fixture, living in Britney Spears Land.And one more thing about that. The Namath Super Bowl was the first one I covered, and it became famous not only because the old AFL beat the older NFL, but because Namath guaranteed it.The guarantee, by the way, was not made at a public press gathering but at a men's smoker where Namath, a little tipsy, nattered on. Luckily for him and for his legend, he had a sober witness with a working press credential.To become as famous as Brady has become is a little harder to do working in Boston than it is in New York or Los Angeles, or even Chicago, where being fat is enough to make you more famous than you deserve.So, kudos to Brady for pulling it off, not that three Super Bowl titles hurt, but, listen, Joe Montana had four rings and married an actress/model without becoming a national non-football curiosity.Surely, like Dorothy told Toto, we are not in Kansas any more. It wouldn't be the Super Bowl if we were.(Contact Bernie Lincicome at lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com.)(Bernie Lincicome writes for the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)