Tom Brady: Whitewash or True Blue?

While we wait for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to decide on the punishment, or lack there of, for Tom Brady and, in turn, what decisions the Patriots are going to have to deal with this year, maybe we should approach the subject from a different point of view.   The New England Patriots quarterback is at the pinnacle of his career.  No football fan can honestly claim that he has failed as a leader of his team, or as a top-rate player all these years.  Now, when it counts the most, his career has been placed in jeopardy from a single act of which he may or may not have been a participant.
Sadly, it is the Pats organization and his fans that are bringing him down. The reputation of his organization’s past behavior and the extremely supportive and unquestioning fan base create doubt and dubious concern from the rest of the football world.  For years Tom has been touted as the white knight of football, a clean-cut, humble, honest man that represents success through hard work, but now there appears to be a crack in the public’s perception of that belief.
Tom is between a rock and a hard place.  He could not go into the meeting with the Commissioner and accept a lesser penalty.  If he did, he would destroy the fan base that has whitewashed him all these years.  It would appear as if he admitted that they were wrong in their support, and, regardless if you like, or don’t like Brady, there is no way he’s going to do anything to trod on his fans’ faith.
Everyone does it you know, whitewashes the players they love, regardless of the fact that they are human, have fallacies, make errors, and don’t want to reveal them publicly.  In recent years we have witnessed certain athletes falter and fall from grace simply because the pedestal they had been placed on top of was too high, too narrow, and too difficult to stay balanced upon.  When they fell, only the most supportive, die-hard fans stood with them.  The rest scrambled away and hid as quickly as possible.
I’m not a fan of Tom Brady.  I’m not a fan of the Patriots, or their fans, but a part of me wants him to win this case, in spite of whether he did or didn’t cheat.  I feel this way because, if he did cheat, it is not his fault alone.  As a society we love to jump on the blame wagon and cast aspersions the moment a popular athlete does not measure up to our expectations.  The expectations from a fan base can be enormously overbearing.  I wonder how many of us could hold up under such demands, or would our egos and our humanity find an eventual path to failure?
Think about it for a moment.  Even if Tom is true blue, he has spent years existing in a different world than most of us experience.  I remember in college how the students parted like the Red Sea when the athletes were walking through, and that was any member of the team, not a superstar.  Tom’s ego has been stroked consistently for years and he has been pampered with extreme wealth and popularity.  Millions of people love him and would follow him to their doom.  How does one’s brain equate that kind of reality?
I’m not condoning cheating in any way, shape, or form.  I’m just saying we need to accept our part in this as well.  However it turns out, there will probably be an asterisk attached to Brady’s legacy and, very possibly, a question on his HOF ballot, which, if he is true blue, will be a shame on society.