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Tom Brady defends business partnership with 'snake-oil salesman' Alex Guerrero
Boston magazine published a takedown piece on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady's friend, business partner and "personal guru" on Friday, citing the Federal Trade Commission's claims that Alex Guerrero passed himself off as a doctor, peddled "Supreme Greens" and "NeuroSafe" as preventative treatments, and falsified clinical trials claiming to have cured 96 percent of terminally ill patients.
Despite the FTC's $65,000 fine and additional restrictive measures against Guerrero for products that made his investors millions, Brady stuck by his pal in Monday's weekly interview with WEEI in Boston.
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The four-time Super Bowl champion tried NeuroSafe before Guerrero's former company took the product off the market and agreed to refund everyone who purchased the drink once the FTC questioned its recent claim to prevent concussions. And Brady continues to take green supplements like the ones that got Guerrero into trouble last decade for suggesting they cured cancer and other deadly diseases.
In fact, Brady believes in Guerrero's holistic approach so completely that he entrusts his diet and training regimen to the man. The two have worked together to establish the TB12 Sports Therapy Center — a so-called athletic preparation, recovery, nutrition and mental fitness facility located outside Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. — to sell what Boston magazine called "modern-day snake oil" to Brady's believers.
"That was part of his past when I met him. Since then, we've just had a great relationship. We see eye to eye on a lot of things, and it's a privilege to work with him. It really is. I wouldn't be playing today if it weren't for what he's been able to accomplish with me and the education process that I've gone through — learning how to take care of myself. So much of it is being proactive. It's not waiting to get sick. It's not waiting to get injured."
As the Patriots quarterback told WEEI's "Dennis & Callahan Morning Show: "I'm my own best advertising." Indeed, Brady has played every game and climbed the NFL's list of all-time greats since missing essentially the entire 2008 season with an ACL injury that he believes Guerrero helped heal holistically.
“In the 10 or 11 years we’ve been working together, he has never been wrong. I had doctors with the highest and best education in our country tell me I wouldn’t be able to play football again, that I would need multiple surgeries on my knee from my staph infection, that I would need a new ACL, a new MCL, that I wouldn’t be able to play with my kids when I’m older. Of course, I go back the next year and win Comeback Player of the Year. I follow the next season and win the MVP. So, it’s interesting, because I’ve chosen a different approach, and that approach works for me. That’s what I want to try to provide to athletes who maybe want to take a different approach, too.”
Brady skirted around the issue of Guerrero's so-called "cancer quackery" — a $40 million a year business that can prevent patients from getting proper treatment until it's too late, according to Boston magazine — and the quarterback instead focused on things like: "We believe that Frosted Flakes is a food."
“You’ll probably go out and drink Coca-Cola and think, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s no problem.’ Why? Because they pay lots of money for advertisements to think that you should drink Coca-Cola for a living? No, I totally disagree with that. And when people do that, I think that’s quackery. And the fact that they can sell that to kids? I mean, that’s poison for kids. But they keep doing it. And obviously you guys may not have a comment on that because maybe that’s what your belief system is. So, you do whatever you want, you live the life you want, and what I’m trying to provide for athletes and for people and all the clients that we have that come in is a different way of thinking, a different way of methods.”
Does anybody actually believe Coca-Cola is good for you? And does anyone believe this besides Brady:
“It kills me to see all these pitchers having Tommy John surgery, knowing that could be avoided. Hamstring pulls and groin injuries, so many of these things that I just shake my head and I go, I can’t believe that this still happens in today’s day and age. That’s why Alex and I started TB12, because I felt based on the care that I received over 10 years, this is what my calling will be after football, is to educate people, and what it really takes.”
Tell that to the Patriots, who listed Brady as questionable or probable with shoulder, finger, rib and foot problems for two straight entire seasons in 2009 and 2010. Maybe it took him a little while to acclimate to becoming an immortal under Guerrero's guidelines, but that wouldn't explain last year's "significant" ankle injury during the regular season or the cold Brady suffered from during the Super Bowl week.
Of course there are benefits to a healthy diet, vegetable supplements and a holistic approach to life — and perhaps those things can prevent some injury and disease — but either Brady doesn't understand how condescending it must sound to players with injuries he shakes his head at and doctors who treat patients that are suffering from the diseases Guerrero claims to have cured, or he just doesn't care.
"When you say, 'Wow, this sounds like quackery,' there are a lot of things I see on a daily basis in Western medicine that I think, 'Wow, why would they ever do that? That is crazy."
After all, it works for him, and if I had Brady's life, I'd probably think I had all the answers, too. Keep in mind, though, that Brady also donated $50,000 to the Jimmy Fund over the summer, so he's not a complete quack. And he's really just defending a friend who's helped him live a healthy lifestyle. He can believe whatever he wants. That doesn't mean we have to buy what TB12 and Guerrero are selling.
Surely, the folks who already dub Brady a cheat in the wake of the deflate-gate saga must be looking forward to his post-playing days, when he'll be on infomercials explaining how we too can be perfect human beings. That is, if he isn't still playing football at age 85. Now, excuse me while I go take a vegetable supplement, so I can get my brain right and starting winning Pulitzers for my everlasting life.
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is a contributor for Ball Don't Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
