Tom Brady Tore His ACL, and All We Got Was a Lousy T-Shirt


While New Englanders are in a period of mourning, the rest of the football world is decidedly less broken up about Tom Brady’s season-ending injury. The New York Daily News gleefully trumpeted the news that Brady is done for the season on today’s cover.

1220992702The fans of other teams are also capitalizing on Brady’s misfortune. Courtesy of Deadspin, we give you Believe Merch and its owner, George, who asked that we not use his last name because he fears receiving “turds” from irate Patriots fans after creating the Bernard Pollard Fan Club t-shirt.

Seriously?!

“Yeah, seriously,” George tells Boston Daily. “Nature abhors a vacuum. Somebody was going to do it, and I came up with it first.”

“I’m not a big believer in karma,” the Steelers fan told us, “but that was an example of karma.”

Because. . . the Patriots won?

“It’s not the winning. It’s the way they’ve won,” George says. “Spygate. There’s the Chargers playoff game. All that stuff. It’s the arrogance of the team. Granted, you’ve got a good team. But the wheel literally came off.”

We were a bit surprised to hear this cavalier attitude toward a quarterback’s injury from a Steelers fan. Their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, was severely injured in a 2006 motorcycle accident.

“When Ben went through that windshield, it was the worst thing in the world,” George confesses. “The message board conversations were ugly.”

Ugly like—give us a second here—his new t-shirt?

But the design is going big business. During our five minute phone conversation, George says he sold four of the shirts.

“On a typical day, Believe Merch gets 100 hits. When I put the shirt up yesterday, I got 3,000. So far today, I’m at 4,000,” George gleefully reports.

But doesn’t he feel at least a little bad for capitalizing on the misery of an injured player?

“I can see where you’re coming from,” George says. “I’m not stupid. These might be viewed as classless, but a lot of people enjoy them. I feel like Michael Douglas’ character in Wall Street. ‘Greed is good.'”

Your capitalist system at work, folks.

Photo from Believe Merch