Being the goat used to be a bad thing in sports. A very bad thing. It meant you cost your team the game.

Bill Buckner was the goat. Scott Norwood was the goat. Maybe you were the goat when you struck out with the bases loaded in a Little League game. I remember developing a sudden urge to eat tin cans after dropping a baton in a high school track relay.

If you were the goat, the best you could do was hope for a chance to redeem yourself in another big opportunity, and thus shed the horns.

“When we played, the goat was the person who screwed up,” said my friend Danielle Lum, who was a multi-sport standout at Kamehameha. “Made the last out in the rally, dropped the ball, didn’t convert the double, got tagged out trying to extend a hit.”

Now it’s almost exactly the opposite. If you’re fortunate enough to be the goat, it means you’re the Greatest Of All Time.

By the old-school definition, the goat of the Super Bowl would have been the Falcons’ offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan.

Calling for a deep pass on third-and-1 with a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter? Shanahan decided against a running play that probably moves the chains — or, at least, allows Atlanta to punt.

The resulting sack and fumble recovered by the Patriots was the biggest play in New England’s historic comeback — and worst pass over run choice since the Seahawks threw a pick instead of giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch at the goal line with the outcome in the balance two Super Bowls ago.

Football play-calling is a lot about weighing risk and reward. So is the coaching job market, and now Shanahan is with the 49ers. Some might call it karma.

For many — especially those of us who consider ourselves objective observers — the new-school definition goat title changed hands Sunday.

How can anyone argue with Tom Brady and his five Super Bowl wins as a quarterback?

Well, as it turns out, that is not a rhetorical question — and the answer is “easily,” especially for 49ers fans.

Joe Montana’s not the goat anymore? You’ve got to be kidding. (Sorry, that was baaaad.)

Goat is not black-and-white. It is not necessarily about championships and certainly not about statistics.

It’s not objective. It’s about who you like, who you think is the greatest ever and for whatever reason you choose. It’s about allegiance.

It’s like farmers in China and Bangladesh … everybody has his own goat.

Brady is easy to dislike and so is his team. It’s sort of like the guy he supported in the presidential election — he won, but a lot of Americans wish he didn’t and think he’s a cheater.

No matter how many Super Bowl rings Brady wins there will be detractors — mostly fans of other teams and of other quarterbacks. They’ll come up with their own metrics that make their favorite No. 1. Or they won’t bother with numbers at all and say that you can’t compare eras.

One guy said Brady’s not the goat because “he had a lot of help.” I think it’s the other way around: Brady helped a lot of other players win Super Bowls. Also, if we’re going to use “help” as a quantifier, no one in a team sport can be the goat.

If we’re talking dominance over a long period of time — and without needing “help” — Serena Williams gets my goat vote.

But if we limit it to football, it’s Brady for the same reason: supremacy over the long haul.

Some question if he would have been tough enough to succeed back when the rules allowed for quarterbacks to be hit more viciously. What these folks fail to account for is that QBs pass a lot more now than in the old days, meaning they are vulnerable more often.

Technically, it’s impossible to name a Greatest Of All Time, because All Time includes the future. I’m Not-stradamus. Are you?

Some say we’re prisoners of the moment, and there’s a new latest and greatest every 15 minutes. It even makes an avid Patriots fan like Junior Tufono (who was GOTPB — Greatest Of The Prep Bowl — in 1980 for ‘Iolani) hesitant to crown Brady.

“I think in the heat of the moment, and I am guilty of doing this as well, we do get caught up in the moment and our emotions do get the best of us. But there is only one factor that will determine the goat, and that is time,” Tufono said. “We cannot honestly say that one player is the goat until the time comes when the game of football is officially over and the opportunity for greatness by every single quarterback has been completely exhausted. In the meantime we have to settle for (Brady as) the goat of his era.”

Too bad there’s no logic and diplomacy like that in political discussions these days.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.