Pranking rookies has been a norm in professional sports for quite some time.
Tom Brady was on the receiving end of a prank that lasted for weeks. During “The Match” broadcast on Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback reflected on the time Drew Bledsoe left his feet purple.
“Yeah, when I was a rookie we had a lot of rookie pranks. And we went out for practice one day, we had this loop where we put our laundry after practice so it’s washed for the next day,” Brady said, transcribed by NESN. “And when I got my loop the next day there were no socks in it. So I went to the equipment manager and said, ‘I needed new socks.’ So he gave me a pair of socks. “And Drew Bledsoe had put this purple dye, it was like a powder, in my sock,” Brady continued.
“So I had practiced for two hours and I looked down at one point in practice and the purple started seeping through the shoes. And I said, ‘What the hell is going on with my shoes?’ Well, I got in the locker room and I had to peel my socks off of my feet. And I had this dark purple stain, my feet looked like Barney the Dinosaur for three weeks and man I scrubbed as hard as I could. I think I scrubbed with Clorox and just about anything else. But I finally got it off.”
Ruthless. Brady continued to discuss the pranks he had on rookies at later points in his career.
“I learned at a young age when people have a lot more money than you, you don’t prank back,” Brady said. “You just accept it and you move on. Fortunately, I had a few rookies when I was a little older and I had a couple more bucks in my pocket so they were on the butt end of a few pranks of mine.”
Chase Winovich’s haircut last season was just one small example of this.
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