A JERSEY GUY: Brady: We Knew About You Long Before You Were The G.O.A.T

At TMG, we catch the stars before they become stars. Tom Brady was just one of many:

The news was not surprising. 

Tom Brady was leaving the Patriots, after 20 seasons, with six Super Bowl  rings.

That immediately set loose a tsunami of Brady stories, reaction to Brady leaving New England.

Speculation--Tampa--about where he would continue a career that will put him in the NFL Hall of Fame.

 But for me, it was just another chapter in "I knew you when'' with college athletes. At The Dallas Morning News, at the Boston Globe and now, to a lesser extent, at TMG, I find the stars before they become stars.

I remember in the fall of 1982, when covering college football for the Dallas Morning News, getting to know an aggressive young quarterback from the University of Pittsburgh named Dan Marino.

 I made a few trips to Pittsburgh, got to know Marino and his teammates as they played out a season that would end with a trip to the Cotton Bowl and a meeting with SMU.

In one of the stranger results, the Panthers, with Marino, lost to a team from SMU with the Pony Express backfield of Craig James and Eric Dickerson, by a score of 7-3.

Fast forward the clock to the summer of 1996 when my TMG colleague Chris Dufresne (then with the Los Angeles Times) when to West Virginia to check on the then somewhat controversial career of a wide receiver from Marshall University named Randy Moss.

We both watched an early scrimmage in which Moss, who had stops at Notre Dame and Florida State, caught a middle screen pass in a crowd of players and then simply hit the warp speed button 60 yards to the end zone.

"What and who was that? we asked each other.

It got even more interesting when in an interview, Moss talked about feeling a lot of "hatred' in him, as he talked about his experienced growing up in West Virginia.

And then there was TB 12. 

For those of us who covered college football, Tom Brady's skills as a QB and leader at Michigan were evident, even though then coach Lloyd Carr decided Drew Henson deserved to share playing time with Brady.

 When Brady lasted until the 33rd pick of the sixth round  of the 2000 NF more than a few of us covering college football thought the Patriots had a margin.

Brady was in my backyard for 20 years as  watched another QB battle develop with Drew Bledsoe before Brady emerged. I watched the Patriots transform from a laughing stock (in 1987-88) when I covered them for the Globe to a dynastic force.

My streak of watching young players develop continued when I started covering Boston College, knowing and writing about players such as Matt Ryan and Luke Kuechly long before the rest of the country.

Kuechly retired this season, wisely listening to council that multiple concussions suffered was a warning sign to switch professions.

Ryan, who is my favorite athlete to deal with of all time, continues to perform at a high level with the Atlanta Falcons  But now Brady is gone--to Tampa and Patriot Nation is not surprisingly pointing fingers at each other for the break up.

  My take on it: Get over it. He gave you 20 good and sometime great seasons and 6 Super Bowl titles. It is time for the Patriots and Coach Bill Belichick to rejoin the peanut gallery of teams who need to scramble into the playoffs.

And if and when  we return to a world where sports is part of the culture, I look forward to finding another star in the making.