Please Release Me From This Hellish Tom Brady Purgatory

Colin Cowherd has been informed that Tom Brady has made a decision where he'll play football next year. This would suggest an announcement or scoop is coming soon. Will it be the Buccaneers? The Chargers? The Bears? A mystery team?

All I can hope for is that text to be accurate and for immediate sweet, merciful release from the Brady news cycle. It is something long overdue that long ago broke my spirit before real-world events should have broken it.

This entire endeavor of trying to read the tea leaves surround Brady's decision has been exhausting. Each and every day for as long as I can remember there's been a new angle or spin or hypothetical. And deep down, a person didn't have to be a cynic to understand that an overwhelming majority of breathless reporting and insight was based on specious flotsam left over from the previous day's rundown or blog posts.

Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time. The breakup of the Patriots dynasty is the Beatles and Led Zepplin rolled into one. The historic importance is not lost on this observer.

At the same time ... Dear God did we ever continue to wring out this content sponge for remaining drips and drabs of interesting juice. The person who does the Jordan vs. LeBron graphics for Undisputed probably thinks the media went to this well too often. Martin Scorcese probably thinks the topic dragged a bit in the middle.

One of the things I like to consider from time to time is which sporting events I'd rather read about the next day in newspaper than follow in real-time. The NBA draft lottery, for instance. Stuff that you'd be better served reading in cold list form. And I'm there with the whole Brady bonanza.

Let me open up to the transaction page and see his name there next to Tampa Bay or Los Angeles or Chicago or Miami. It'd be an upgrade to my mental health.

Some of you are reading this and wondering if, perhaps, I have the wrong job. That buying into all this ancillary chatter would be a good thing. You know what? You may have a point. But I have done my best to allow those on staff here to dine early and often at the conjecture cafe and lean into the silly season.

The clicks and interest have been there. So congratulations to all those who have divined pleasure from this saga. In a way I'm envious. Soon we will be equals, though.

For lo, out there on a horizon a sunbeam breaks. It signals the end of pundits looking at a list of NFL teams, realizing they exist, and adding them to the whiteboard of potential Brady landing places. It signals the end of reverse-engineered prognostication dependent on unknowable personal feelings.

I feel so much older than when this all started but soon, by the grace of all things good and pure, there will be peace.