Tom Brady Hurt His Knee and Became a Celebrity

Quarterback's every move is well documented

We'll need to wait until September to see if Tom Brady's arm lost any of its zip or if his timing with Randy Moss has been affected, but we can already appreciate one way his injury changed him. He turned into Lindsay Lohan in the offseason.

Don't take my word for it, just check ESPN.com's front page where you'll find an article with the headline "Patriots' Brady throws, stretches in light rain." That's a pretty good version of the page in celebrity tabloids where you pictures of starlets pumping gas or picking up dog poop to remind everyone that celebrities are people too.

You might be asking yourself how a football player taking part in practice becomes a newsworthy event, a justifiable question if ever there was one. The answer is that the article isn't actually about football, even though it is on a sports website and presented as an article about sports. Sure, there are some words about Patriots practice and bland quotes from Brady about how good it is to be back on the field, quotes you probably already read 50 times this week if Brady is of interest to you, but the real point of the article is Gisele Bundchen.

Or, more precisely, Bundchen's uterus. Brady tells reporters that it is currently unoccupied, which contradicts rumors which spread somewhere else, and represents the only earthly reason why ESPN saw fit to report on the fact that he showed up to practice on Thursday. You know that because there was no mention of whether or not any other Patriot players had pregnant wives, girlfriends or offseason dalliances.

Which is fine, as far as it goes. In the future, though, they could make it obvious that they are reporting on "Tom Brady, Celebrity" instead of anything having to do with sports. That would make it more difficult to rationalize putting the story in the sports section, but that's the risk you run in such cases.

Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.

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