MUNICH — Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles surveyed the jam-packed room of reporters at the team’s first German news conference Friday and said with a wry smile, “They didn’t come to see me.”
No, coach, they didn’t. The media, mostly international, came to see the most famous American football player, and one of the very few — maybe the only one — who is known to the non-cognoscenti of the sport in Europe: Tom Brady, who is called The GOAT so often it might as well be part of his name.
The conference, which drew about four times as many media as the one held by the Seahawks a day earlier, was just two questions in when a man in the front row stood up, walked to the podium and presented Brady with custom-made lederhosen. Those are leather shorts, of sorts, that are traditional garments in German-speaking countries; but these were no doubt the first lederhosen in history decked out with a “TB12” logo.
