Another football season is beginning. It’s the first NFL campaign without Tom Brady in the league since 2000.
But Brady is, and likely never will be, far away from football consciousness.
On Wednesday, Delta Air Lines announced that it is hiring Brady. Not as a spokesperson or in any other similar ceremonial role. Brady will be a “strategic advisor.”
Tom Brady, noted aviation expert. Wait, Brady is not a noted aviation expert. He knows nothing about aviation, at least nothing more than anyone else.
Via Kelly Yamanouchi of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Delta cited Brady’s “teamwork, performance and perseverance.” Brady will “advise Delta on training and teamwork tools for employees.” He also will “help with marketing and ‘customer engagement’” as well as “support Delta in its work in communities.”
According to Sports Business Journal, Brady and Bastian appeared Wednesday on CNBC to promote the new arrangement. Bastian called it a “unique, one-of-a-kind partnership” with Brady.
“This is not a sponsorship,” Bastian said. “Yes, Tom will obviously be representing the brand and he’s awesome at it, but what I’m more excited about is he’s going to come inside the company and he’s going to be talking to our people about greatness, about resilience, about excellence, about performance.”
It sounds like a combination of a sponsorship and a captive motivational speaker, an in-house Matt Foley who definitely does not live a van down by the river.
Delta declined to say what Brady is being paid. It’s unclear whether that information will bubble up in any of the publicly-traded corporation’s financial reports.
It’s fair to assume Brady will be making a lot of money. And it’s fair to assume that, whatever word salad they use to explain his role, Brady will be attempting to inspire the employees to do their jobs to the best of their ability — and not to, for example, check the PSI on the tires of the landing gear (I stole that from Josh Alper).
When it comes to an airline, I have one objective. Plane stays in the air until it’s time to land. If Brady saying “let’s f—king go” from time to time to Delta employees helps keep the flying go as intended, that works for me.