Not so fast, world! You all want to be "FIRST!", but you screw all of us in the pursuit!!!

So I wake up today to word from one of my readers:  That the reader will be glad to not hear about the Antichrist, including from my blog!

At this point, even trying to shake myself awake, it takes about 5 minutes to realize what my reader and friend is saying:  Tom Brady had been reported to have announced his retirement through an associated Twitter account.  (Not the circumstances, just that he had retired.)

And the next thought I have is:  "Hmmm...  That's strange.  I'd think that, if there were any chance of THIS, he'd be going out like Peyton, Ray-Ray, and Jerome Bettis did -- with a retirement Lombardi."

We got to talking, and my friend made a very good point in counter:  There was a very good chance this was Gisele putting her high heel in Tom's forehead and stating that he was to end his career now while there was at least a chance he had a brain left to unscramble and that the illegal drugs he was taking weren't compromising his manhood.  (Well, half that:  The Gisele part. The part about the drugs is mine!)

And that discussion would've taken place this week, so Goodell couldn't manipulate things in his favor for one more Brady run.

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That's all fine and good, except for one problem, and it started coming out in Sports Illustrated slightly after I woke up.

That was news to Bruce Arians, the coach of the Buccaneers.

(Late reports from SI also say his father also has not heard of the decision.)

And, eventually, there was reason for that:  The tweet had been retracted and his agent had to go all over the place, stating you'll hear it from Tom first.

The situation, as best I can glean it, is that someone, for whatever reason, posted a tweet which basically went the level of "Thanks for all the memories", etc. -- and everyone who had the interest of being "FIRST!" made the report that Brady had announced.

As of present writing, Deadspin is reporting that the decision has been made, and it is to retire (which would explain why ESPN is still in post-mortem mode on Brady's career, and hasn't appeared to retract the "reports" from earlier in the day).  The only thing is the timing -- which I can see, because Brady retiring before the Super Bowl will overshadow the entire event.

(Edit to add:  To give you an idea of how ridiculous Tom Brady has been to an entire generation of the NFL, SI has no less than SIX STORIES on the front page about him as of 7:30 PM Pacific January 29, 2022.)

That said...

sigh

Just like the Amy news on Jeopardy! earlier this week (though, admittedly, this on a much larger scale!), seems to be the Internet's great obsession with being...

"FIRST!!!!!!!"

First to comment.

First to come up with the news.

Etc. and so forth and so on.

No one thought to ask the relevant people the relevant backup questions.

And now you have all the scurrying around and post-mortems and all that stuff.

And I can get the joke that he deserves two or three such rounds of this, but still...

Stay tuned, and we'll see who's right on this one.