A new biography details an unusual locker-room rumor that followed Tom Brady during his early years at Michigan. (Image via Getty)
29 that Anderson’s new biography details the unusual episode from Brady’s early Michigan years. Brady arrived in Ann Arbor in 1995 as a first-year quarterback buried deep on the depth chart. By 1998, Brady had won Michigan’s starting job. He finished his college career with 20 wins and 35 touchdowns in 25 games before the New England Patriots selected him with the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL Draft.
Because they rarely saw him with women, a new biography by Lars Anderson says some Wolverines players briefly wondered whether Brady was gay. Daily Mail’s Max Winters reported Sept.
That speculation ended after one athletic department employee overheard something from Brady’s dorm room that quickly became locker-room news, according to the book. He also had little visible dating life, according to Anderson. “For a brief period, a few of Brady’s teammates wondered about his sexuality,” Anderson writes. The biography says Brady was rarely seen with women and often spent Friday nights focused on football.
Tom Brady spent his first years at Michigan fighting for snaps, questioning his future and trying to prove he belonged. Apparently, his teammates were wondering about something entirely different. He was not yet the NFL star who would eventually win seven Super Bowls.
In a 2022 Outsports article that was later updated in 2024, Cyd Zeigler noted that Brady had largely avoided discussing LGBTQ rights during his playing career, including same-sex marriage and gay players in the NFL. Former Patriots offensive tackle Ryan O’Callaghan, who came out publicly in 2017, told Outsports that Brady treated him well while they were teammates. Buckley came out publicly in 2011 and said Brady’s behavior toward him never changed. Stay updated with the latest Asian Games 2026 news , check the Asian Games medal tally and complete Asian Games schedule .
Because he did not believe he would get a fair chance, at one point, Brady told head coach Lloyd Carr that he was considering transferring.
The next day, according to the biography, the student shared what he had heard with several players. “Guys,” he said, “Tom Brady is definitely into girls. The college story comes from teammates speculating about Brady, rather than anything Brady publicly said about his sexuality. He also said he believed Brady would have accepted him had he come out while they were playing together. “Tom Brady was always super friendly to me before I came out and super friendly to me after I came out,” Buckley said. Brady has not built his public identity around LGBTQ advocacy, according to the reporting cited above.
Then came the story that apparently made its way around the team. Anderson writes that a student who worked in Michigan’s athletic department walked past Brady’s room late one night and heard a woman inside. “Hearing muffled noises inside Brady’s room, he stopped and put his ear close to the door. There was no mistaking: Those were the breathless gasps of uninhibited desire emanating from a female voice. The sheets were shaking. That conclusion reflected the teammates’ assumptions at the time. Hearing Brady with a woman, of course, would not independently establish his sexual orientation. The story is still revealing for another reason. Brady was barely registering as a football figure at Michigan then. He did not play during his freshman season and appeared in only two games the following year. He stayed. The player who once struggled to get on the field eventually became the most decorated quarterback in Super Bowl history. His public record on LGBTQ issues is similarly limited. That silence came even as Brady played alongside people who later publicly came out as gay. O’Callaghan recalled Brady giving him a ride to practice after the young lineman missed the team bus. Boston sports columnist Steve Buckley offered a similar account. Join conversation Share your thoughts in the comments Be respectful · TOI community guidelines That distinction matters. The people who worked around him, however, described their direct interactions with him positively. Nearly three decades after those Michigan teammates reportedly wondered about his dating life, the anecdote now reads less like a revelation about Brady and more like a very college-football piece of locker-room gossip from before anyone knew what he would become. Get the latest Sports News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.