HOUSTON – The mail the other day brought an invitation to one of those many silly Super Bowl events.

This one asks folks to attend a barbecue happy hour with Trent Green and Deuce McAllister or a pre-game brunch with Jerry Rice and Chris Chambers.

Such a thrill – for the tidy sum of $250 per person.

Hey……. they probably give everyone who attends a hat.

This is one extreme of the Super Bowl, a week of excess unlike any in the nation.

The other extreme plays quarterback for the New England Patriots. He’s a guy who seems more like a grownup Opie Taylor than a swashbuckling Joe Namath (pre-Suzy Kolber, of course).

Tom Brady has taken aw shucks and gee whiz to new levels. He’s the sixth-round pick who supplanted Drew Bledsoe and led the Patriots to victory over the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. He became such a sensation and feel-good story that one of his former teammates asked about him once by saying: “How’s Everybody’s All-American?”

Brady, though, keeps right on marching in his own parade of happiness and warm cuddles.

He just missed the playoffs last year, then helped the Patriots win 14 games in a row this season en route to another Super Bowl appearance.

Along the way he had time to fly to Washington and sit next to Laura Bush during her husband’s State of the Union address.

Talk about All-American.

Someone asked Brady last week if he thought Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme aspired to be Tom Brady – you know, follow Opie’s success story.

“Why would he want to be a guy that is slow and has an average arm?” Brady quipped. “I would want to be Michael Vick. Now that’s an aspiration.”

Moms everywhere smiled.

Brady was quick to point out that Delhomme has brought the Panthers back eight times to win on the final drive – a highlight reel show if ever there was one. “I don’t think that I have ever filled up a highlight reel,” he said. “I just try to throw more completions, move the sticks and score when you get down close.”

And that’s all there is to it.

One of Brady’s closest friends is Browns tight end Aaron Shea. The two played together at Michigan, and Shea still refers to Brady, who is 26, as “Tommy.”

Can’t you just see Aaron and Tommy and Jimmy and Joey and Opie and Huck painting the picket fence? Brady even defined his role on the Patriots by saying: “I play the role of quarterback.”

Thanks for the clarification.

It would be easy to poke fun at Brady if he weren’t so doggone……… well…… so doggone Brady. There’s something refreshing about his wide-eyed approach, his simplistic view.

Take, for example, how he elaborated on his role as “quarterback” : “I think in our offense it is my job to get the team in the right play and to find the open receiver,” he said. “I think those are two things that I take a lot of pride in. Some guys do it running around, some guys do it by squeezing the ball in tight spots. I just try to find the most open guy and give him the easy ball to catch.”

That is quarterbacking in its essence. And it’s Brady at his best. Plain, direct, to the point, but focused and competitive.

When someone mentioned to Brady that Warren Sapp had ripped the Patriots’ offensive line, Brady said: “He will get a good view from wherever he is sitting.”

This guy epitomizes what the re-born Bill Belichick has built with the Patriots, a team that has no wide receiver to be feared and no running game of note and this sickeningly wholesome quarterback who quite simply feels it’s his job to throw a good pass to an open receiver.

Yet it’s a team that wins because the parts fit and no part is greater than any other.

At the helm is Brady, the warmest and fuzziest of the warm and fuzzy. Brady at his core is a winner, a guy who doesn’t care how he wins – run, pass, ugly, pretty – as long as he wins. This week Everybody’s All-American will return to the spotlight and smile his way through the most demanding week of an NFL player’s life. He will enjoy every minute of it, and it will be surprising if he does something to embarrass himself or his team.

“It is a ton mind-boggling,” Brady said. “When I was 12 years old I could hardly throw a football. To realize that 13 or 14 years ago I wanted to play baseball and I wanted to go to a great college. Every step of the way you continue to aspire to do different things. It has always been a dream to play professional football and it is even more of a dream to play on a team that is going to the Super Bowl.”

—

(c) 2004, Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).

Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online at http://www.ohio.com/.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

—–

PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):

Superbowl

AP-NY-01-26-04 2134EST