Bernstein: Bill Belichick Cuts Off Tom Brady's Medicine Man
By Dan Bernstein --
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(670 The Score) Good for Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who's apparently listening to his inner BS-detector enough to know something fishy when he sees it. He has finally had enough.
For several years now, Tom Brady's personal health guru Alex Guerrero has been accruing power and privilege in Foxboro, becoming a ubiquitous presence around the Patriots to the point that he was given an office in Gillette Stadium and built his own private treatment center down the road from their practice facility.
An increasing number of Brady's teammates have been attending sessions there and using the expensive and overhyped products the quarterback and his buddy are peddling, causing strife with the team's actual licensed and certified medical and athletic training staff. Belichick has now stepped in, siding with his real doctors over the quack.
As reported in detail by the Boston Globe on Tuesday, Guerrero can no longer travel on the team plane or have access to the gameday sidelines. And no players other than Brady are permitted to be seen by him on team property. It's a smart call, and it appears Belichick is finally heeding recommendations to distance his team from a potentially dangerous charlatan.
Guerrero isn't an accredited practitioner of any kind outside of a purported degree in Chinese medicine from the now-shuttered Samra University of Oriental Medicine in Los Angeles, and he has been sanctioned by the FTC for outlandish claims regarding the merchandise he has marketed and by federal regulators for falsely presenting himself as a medical doctor. He was investigated for performing unlicensed physical therapy at his center, and the Globe reports that he "has a long history of financial troubles, bankruptcies and legal entanglements."
At one point, he and Brady were publicly touting a magic concussion water that they claimed "protects your brain from the consequences of sports-related traumatic brain injury" before the feds stepped in.
After giving all the leeway he could for years, Belichick is now content to let Brady believe what he wants, while trying to protect the rest of his territory from phony-baloney silliness that has gone unchecked for too long.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Bernstein and Goff Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.