No, Terry Bradshaw did not use Tom Brady as a fake name back in the '80s.
Well, at least he didn't request that it be done.
A Twitter post from the blog Quirky Research caught attention far and wide Wednesday morning when it shared a newspaper clipping from 1983. In it, Bradshaw, then in the twilight of his legendary career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, supposedly checked into a Louisiana hospital for surgery under an assumed name.
That name? Tom Brady.
Or "Thomas Brady," to be exact.
As incredulous as the rest of us, The Boston Globe's Chad Finn reached out to FOX Sports, and Bradshaw supposedly told them via a PR contact that it wasn't true. However, a hawkeyed Twitter user pointed out that a few papers had carried the news at the time.
Then, someone else found Bradshaw giving the actual, much more boring story, shortly thereafter. While he didn't debunk the fact that he'd used "Thomas Brady" as an alias, he claimed no role in providing the fake name himself.
Bradshaw -- who once shared the record for most Super Bowl wins as a QB with Joe Montana, with four, before Brady supplanted them both -- has long been an admirer of No. 12 -- even if he was "shocked" when Brady opted to leave the Patriots as a free agent last year.
We will say this: Whatever the origin of Bradshaw's fake moniker, it's a pretty incredible coincidence.
