Despite Sudden Surge of Interest, Tom Brady's Conflict of Interest Not a Big Deal

Welcome to 'Ask Jimmy,' where SI Media writer Jimmy Traina will answer one question about a burning topic from the sports media world.

Today's question: Tom Brady's unique situation that allows him to be part owner of the Las Vegas Raiders and Fox's No. 1 NFL game analyst has been known for a long time. There have been some vocal critics of the arrangement but the public outcry did not explode until he was shown wearing a headset during Las Vegas' Monday night loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Why do you think there's been a sudden uptick in interest? Is it all just seeing him in the coaches' box?

 I think that the fact that it's Tom Brady is what is triggering most of this. If this was an owner named Joe Smith, people wouldn't care as much. There's a couple things. One, it's new. We've never seen an owner as a broadcaster, so this is completely uncharted territory. Two, it's Tom Brady, and a lot of people hate Tom Brady, so they're going to look for anything to try to get Tom Brady. But if you listen to people inside the game, they don't think it's a big deal. For instance, Brady is calling the Cowboys and Bears this Sunday and then the week after that, the Raiders play the Bears. So, I think that has added to this whole thing.

Here's the thing. The NFL used to have these production meetings in person. They do them on Zoom now ever since COVID.  I think if you're in person, maybe there's a tendency there where you're like, 'you know what, by the way, we're going to do this or do that.'

Ben Johnson is not going to give Tom Brady a bunch of inside information. I'm sure that meeting is going to be like 'we want to get Caleb Williams on track, we need to do some things differently on offense.' He's not going to reveal that they are going to run a fake punt and Brady's not going to tell the Raiders to watch out for a fake punt when they play. I think you get anecdotes about the players, you're not getting strategy.

If I was a team that was concerned about it, I just wouldn't do the production meeting. Then you force the NFL to make a big stink out of it.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Despite Sudden Surge of Interest, Tom Brady's Conflict of Interest Not a Big Deal.