Three mini-columns for the price of one ...
TOM BRADY
The only time I ever talked to Tom Brady one-on-one was early in his third year with the Patriots.
He had come off the bench to replace the veteran Drew Bledsoe in the middle of the previous season and had led the Patriots over the Rams to win the Super Bowl.
He was standing in front of his locker by himself, not yet the mega-star he would become, not yet Tom Brady, but already someone who was a star on the rise, already someone who was firmly entrenched into the hearts and minds of New England sports fans, his sliver of sports immortality already assured.
Call him Tom Brady on training wheels that day.
And the only real question that day was had the year before been some fabulous fluke, one of those million-to-one shots, the frog who dreamed of being a king and then became one? For isn't sports history full of one hit wonders?
"Have you ever thought that you could play the rest of your career and never have a season as great as this one?'' I asked.
He looked momentarily surprised, as if not only had he never been asked that question before, but he considered it a ridiculous question.
No big surprise. No one ever sees the future. No one ever believes their biggest moment might already be past. Especially a young quarterback who the season before had a season out of some adolescent sports fantasy. But wasn't sports history full of one-hit wonders?
So wasn't he just a little bit concerned that he already had his own best sports moment, no matter how much longer he played in the NFL?
"No,'' said Brady, as he turned away and stated walking toward his future, a future no one ever could have imagined.
PATRIOTS
Welcome to the Patriots Invitational.
The one where the Patriots got the overmatched Tennessee Titans in the first round and treated them like some patsy, some cushy home game on a college basketball team's December schedule. You know the drill: come into town, get a big appearance fee, play the game, get beat, go home, thanks for coming.
In a better NFL world, playoff games should be, if not memorable, certainly entertaining. If nothing else, they should not be games that you all but forget about by the time you reach the parking lot. Suffice it to say that Saturday night had all the suspense of a preseason game.
Overstated?
No doubt.
But not by much.
There's little doubt that there probably was more suspense walking around Kennedy Plaza on Saturday night than there was sitting in Gillette Stadium on Saturday night watching the Pats slap around the Titans.
This was an NFL playoff game?
Vince Lombardi must be rolling his eyes somewhere.
FRIARS
These are the games Providence College has to win.
Big East games.
Home games
Games in front of big crowds.
The kind of games the Friars have to win if this is going to be a season that ends in the NCAA Tournament, the kind of season that gets remembered, the kind of season that lives forever in a banner at Alumni Hall.
These are the stakes here in this winter of 2018 for Kyron Cartwright, Rodney Bullock and Jalen Lindsey, the three senior stars who once again are trying to get to the NCAA Tournament.
So it was Monday afternoon at The Dunk against Butler, Martin Luther King Day, another big crowd, another reminder that when the Friars get it going The Dunk is a very special place. No big surprise. Nor is this PC team. They are not a great PC team, not when compared to some others from the school's storied basketball past, the ones that all but hover over this team like ghosts. The past can rain heavy. Even in college basketball.
This is a team that figures to go as far as the three seniors take it. That's often the case at PC, where the late Dave Gavitt once said that the history of PC basketball was essentially written by kids who made their reputations at Providence College, not before they got there.
In many ways this team is an example of that.
Certainly the three seniors are. Lindsey has the ability to make deep 3-pointers, a strong kid who gives the Friars an obvious physicality. Bullock is a slithery kid who can flat-out score.
And Cartwright?
Cartwright is the heart and soul of the team, a kid who we can put on the list of all the other great PC point guards through the years.
These Friars will go as far as he takes them.