Malcolm Henry
We have all been accidentally added to a group chat and it is usually results in a polite ‘see ya later’ or maybe you pull a prank and go along with it for a while. Honestly, that prank angle is where I thought this story was going when I first heard it… but, nope. Buckle up.
The ninth grade team at Notre Dame Preparatory (Pontiac, Mich.) was gathering early in the season and getting to know one another. The coach recommended a group chat thread so that everyone could text back and forth. It is all pretty straightforward at the beginning.
The 14 numbers were added and a chain was started. 13 numbers were correct. 1 number was a little off.
“Y’all meant to add me to this?”
Yup.
“You know who I am?”
Yup.
Nope. They didn’t. It was Sean Murphy-Bunting. A cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And he did not ask out of chat, he went along with it!
Say what…
Jason Whalen, an assistant coach with a son on the team, talked to The Washington Post about the story. It is where we get our details. Their writing is better, so if you wanna read it there, you can. Or stay here, same details.
Anywayyyyys, back to our version of the tale.
Whalen recounts that the boys, now finally convinced it was Murphy-Bunting who FaceTimed the group… got introduced all around the locker room. Of course tight end Rob Gronkowski got involved, wide receiver Mike Evans said hey, cornerback Richard Sherman and running back Leonard Fournette also made an appearance.
Then the boys got the courage to make …. the ask… Tom Brady. A Michigan Man himself, why not shoot your shot!
Fournette found Brady in a meeting but didn’t want to let the kids down, so he stayed on the phone until the meeting was over and then dropped the bomb on the kids.
“They were shocked,” Fournette said to ESPN. “I think that’s … to guys in high school, Tom is the figure for them. You know what I mean? Who wouldn’t want to look up to a guy like that?”
“What’s up fellas,”Brady said when he popped on with the boys. Again, according to WaPo.
Brady told ESPN that he didn’t know what he was getting into when he picked up the phone. Their writing is better than ours, too. We know our place. But, the details are all here.
“That was sweet,” Brady said. “I didn’t know who it was. [Leonard] said, ‘Here’s my boy’ or whatever he said. It was nice. It would have been nice for me when I had been in high school too.
“That was fun. That was really fun. It was really good to see all those young kids hyped up.”
How the kids ended up with the wrong number is anyone’s guess. Murphy-Bunting grew up about a half hour away in Macomb (Mich.) and so it is logical that he still has the same number as when he was in high school?
Either way… this is way better than when I get added to the wrong chat.
Cool story, kids.
