Patriots fan shuts down ESPN’s request to use his TB12 video

Whenever something really cool happens, it seems like the ESPN Assignment Desk is right there. Hey, cool video, mind if we use it on ESPN? All that.

Well, here’s a cool video of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady at Milton Academy on Sept. 30. He was there shooting a commercial (I’ll leave my thoughts on the ISL out for now because they’re not relevant to this scenario).

Nice. It’s Brady throwing. The man, who tweets the video did so at Jeff Howe, Patriots beat writer for the Boston Herald. Cool. Howe retweets, helping Billy receive several hundred retweets and favorites. Nice.

So then, ESPN sees it… They, like Howe, thought it was cool. OK.

My guess is this is probably an intern’s (possibly unpaid) job to scour the internet to find interesting content. Yes. And I’d say most people tell ESPN go for it. ESPN doesn’t pay them or anything, but most people who tweet these kinds of videos aren’t looking for money. They’re usually just trying to share with as many people as possble. Unless you’re Billy…

Ooh… Yeah. He just went there. So his video didn’t end up airing on ESPN. He didn’t want them to use it. Kind of a hot take to say they started deflategate. They covered it, but didn’t the Patriots start it by doing it?

Here’s where the situation takes an irrelevant yet interesting turn: I actually saw an ad earlier in the week looking for football players for a commercial. I submitted the app but never heard back. Pretty bummed to find out it would have been an Under Armour commercial with Tom Brady. I mean, me and Brady (possibly) would have been the only two guys to play in a game at Gillette Stadium — unless there was someone else there who had.

 

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