Author Sean Glennon Talks His New Book And The Great Quarterback Debate

In author Sean Glennon’s new book, Tom Brady vs. The NFL: The Case for Football’s Greatest Quarterback, Glennon put his own spin on the greatest quarterback of all-time debate by claiming that Tom Brady is the best quarterback the league has ever seen.

"This book is meant to start arguments in bar rooms, on the radio, and in comment sections," said Glennon.

Brady was selected 199^th overall in the 2000 NFL Draft, has won three Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots and has become the poster-boy for elite quarterbacks in the NFL, leaving many critics and fans debating whether or not he is, or will become, the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. 

Glennon is one of those people.  He makes that case in his book that, even though Brady is still playing in the league, he has already surpassed the likes of Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, and Joe Montana for the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.

"This book almost killed me because I had to take all these stats and put them into a narrative,” said Glennon.  "I wanted to be able to compare Brady to the other great quarterbacks from a perspective of knowing the game."

Glennon began writing his book roughly 18 months ago (although he isn’t exactly sure how long it actually took) while he was a columnist at the Boston Phoenix newspaper.  He was approached by Triumph Publishing Co. to write a book comparing Brady and Peyton Manning.  Almost a year into writing the book, Glennon realized that the real debate is not between Brady and Manning, but instead, it is about where Brady ranks among the greatest quarterbacks of all-time.

Glennon took this idea and ran with it, doing extensive research and looking up the stats of 14 retired quarterbacks and some of the game’s best active NFL quarterbacks, but wanted to come at it from the angle of being informed.

He didn’t want to bash great quarterbacks of the past just to make his point.  He wanted to use his knowledge of the game to tell why each quarterback was so great, but why Brady was better.  An approach that can be difficult when comparing a quarterback from today’s game to quarterbacks that played in a time when the game was completely different.

“It’s hard to compare quarterbacks today to Roger Staubach and Terry Bradshaw because it’s just a different style of game,” said Glennon.

Today, it seems as though Brady has surpassed nearly every quarterback on the “Greatest of All Time” list, except for the legendary Montana.  When it came to this debate, it was this argument that Glennon enjoyed most while writing his book.

“The most interesting story for me was telling the story of Joe Montana, the second greatest quarterback of all time.”

Glennon knows that there will always be people out there who will back Montana and everything he accomplished.  His perfect 4-0 record in the Super Bowl, his zero interceptions thrown in Super Bowl games, and all the other records and stats that he compiled during his illustrious career.  But, the way Glennon sees it, Brady has already been to five Super Bowls, one more than Montana ever got to and Brady is the only quarterback in history to win his first 10 playoff games.

“This argument may be settled by the time Brady’s career is over, one way or another,” said Glennon.

Currently, Brady sits at 12^th on the all-time passing yards list, one spot ahead of Joe Montana and over 30,000 yards behind Brett Favre, who has 71,838 yards passing.

Bloggers and the Media vs. Sports

For my sports journalism class, we had to read two pieces online that had to deal with sports bloggers and the media having struggles with major professional sports leagues.
In the first article, "Buzz Bissinger vs. Mark Cuban on Twitter," you see a professional blogger (Bissinger) and his one-sided argument with Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban.  Cuban started the "Twitter war" off by calling Bissinger a coward for some of the stuff that he wrote in one of his articles about player and fan stereotypes in the NBA.  Bissinger responded to Cuban with his own little rant, but when Cuban took the high road and decided to not respond back, it was Bissinger who repeatedly attacked Cuban for not backing up his claim of being a so-called coward.
Bissinger's followers got involved and also began criticizing Bissinger's pieces, in which case, he expanded his war to casual followers and attacked them for not reading his full article and reading both sides to Bissinger's claims about stereotypes in the NBA.  But, before I continue any further with Bissinger, I want to get to a second piece that ties into the media and sports issue.
In the second piece we had to read, a piece from the New York Times written in 2008, the author, Tim Arango, talks about the growing tensions between major sports leagues and media members and the restrictions being put on media outlets to only being able to publish so much multimedia content per story.  The piece starts off with a side-story about how Cuban (yes, him again) began banning all bloggers from being allowed into the team locker rooms because their credibility as journalists was lacking.  But, the NBA said he had to let major news outlet site bloggers into the team room, so his response was to let in any blogger.  Now certain leagues put restrictions on how much multimedia content news organizations can publish on a site, whether it's 30 second highlight clips, or two pictures, the leagues have control over the media.
Now, the reason I wanted to tie these two stories together before I got to my main point is because of this: a bloggers' credibility as a journalist is tarnished by what Bissinger displayed on Twitter.  There is a reason for why Cuban began banning bloggers into the team locker room and it was because he didn't see them fit to cover the stories accurately.  Now, I'm not saying Bissinger doesn't cover things accurately, but the way he acted on Twitter doesn't make him seem professional in the slightest.  He is a blogger and is opinionated, which is what differs a blogger from a regular news reporter.  But, his cursing and attacking others because they simply didn't agree with his piece shows me that he really shouldn't deserve the respect of high-ranking personnel, such as Cuban.
And it is people like him who are the reason why there are strains between leagues and the media.  Leagues are tired of unprofessional media members who abuse the power that they have to display content, so they need to decide who should cover and print what and who shouldn't be allowed to cover at all.