I figured this is more the subject of opinion, so I went with IMHO.
Anyway, there’s a joke going around FB that suggests that the Brady judge had Tom on his fantasy team. Nyuck nyuck.
If that were true, would he have actually had sufficient reason to recuse himself? Or is the situation too stupidly trivial to make a difference?
What would be trivial about it?
It sounds to me like it would be a conflict of interest.
Um, the stakes?
It would be a conflict only at the most insignificant level. Unless it was a million dollar buy-in fantasy league, I cannot see how a federal judge would put his livelihood at risk over a replacement level fantasy QB. Now, if the judge revealed that he had put down a substantial bet on the Pittsburgh v. New England game next week? Yeah - that’d be a conflict of interest.
At this point many fantasy leagues haven’t picked players yet, so the chances are low.
It’s trivial, but on the other hand it would be very embarrassing for a judge to get written up in the press as betting on football in some form while he or she had an NFL case on the docket.