Football Fans who say they Hate the Patriots are Lying.
I had my first class of the semester last week and when I introduced myself to my new students at CU-Boulder (Go Buffs!), I mentioned that I am excited about football season and that I am….gulp…a Patriots fan. I don’t live in New England so I’m used to, and I am amused by, the groans I get when I mention my team allegiance. But there are fifty students in the class, so the groans were magnified. I have never really understood genuinely hating other teams in sports, so I did what I always do when I hear about Patriots hate, I asked a few students the question:
“Why do you hate the Patriots?”
I received the same answers I always do and I have enough data now to draw two conclusions:
- People do genuinely hate the Patriots. The hate is real. I believe them.
- The reasons people give for hating the Patriots are lies. I don’t believe them.
So the hate is real but the reasoning is built on a foundation of lies and I can prove it…well, sort of. Let’s start with the top two reasons that people always “say” they hate the Patriots (the quotes around the “say” remind you that they are lying). Why do they lie? I believe Patriots haters have already made the decision to hate and now they need a data point, any data point, to confirm their decision and this leads to lying. The confirmation bias is not malicious, but we must clear up these lies so America can move forward.
Reason for Hating the Patriots #1: “They are cheaters”
Whenever someone makes this claim I always ask them, “How do you feel about your team’s cheating violations?” Usually, I get a glazed look and this is where it gets fun being in Colorado. The team with the most cheating violations in the NFL over the last ten years is the Denver Broncos. The Patriots come in around #17 and not a single team is innocent. It’s true, every single team has multiple cheating violations. Now I don’t condone cheating, not at all, my point is simply that when people lean on intolerance for cheating and their own high moral standards to support their hatred of the Patriots; it is hypocrisy at best. The same fans never care about their own team’s cheating violations or moral standards. It’s confusing to me that fans could care less when a player on their team inflates his body with PEDs (something that actually impacts the game) but a half of a PSI missing from a football on a cold day in a blowout game is very upsetting to them (queue Mark Brunell crying). There are fans that don’t care if their star linebacker is guilty of obstructing justice for a murder!- but those same fans have zero tolerance for the stealing of another team’s play signals (which isn’t even illegal). C’mon, admit it, you don’t really care about cheating, if you did, you would be furious that the Minnesota Vikings were busted warming footballs with heaters on the sidelines in 2014, a clear rule violation that only resulted in a warning.
Reason for Hating the Patriots #2: “Tom Brady is such a whiner”
I agree. Tom Brady whines all the time. He is emotional and he is in the ear of the referee after every play — and your quarterback should be too. If your QB is not doing this, you should be pissed. If your QB isn’t livid every time his punter comes on the field or every time a call goes against his team, he should find a new job, like Jay Cutler.
The funny thing about this part of the conversation is I usually ask people at this point, “Who is your team?” When they tell me [fill in the blank with any team] I follow up with, “So if we could rewind the clock to 2000 and [previously said team] could select Tom Brady, would you want them to have him?” Usually, at this point, they say, “Well, yeah, of course”. Okay, so you don’t hate Brady, you just hate that he’s not on your team. I then tilt my head softly and tell them, “you don’t have to lie anymore” and offer a hug. Nobody finds this charming.
So now that we got these insane lies you tell yourself as to why you hate the Patriots, I am going to help guide you through the actual reasons why you hate them:
The Real Reason you Hate the Pats #1: You are Sick of Them
Patriots have been in the nine of out the last eleven AFC Championships and four out of the last ten Super Bowls. I get it — you are just plain sick of them. If you are not a Patriots fan, you’d like to see other teams in the mix. That logic sounds really reasonable, so why not just say that instead of jumping on a false moral high horse, proclaiming you care about cheating and whining?
The Real Reason you Hate the Pats #2: Tom Brady and Giselle are Super Hot
Admit it, Tom Brady is super handsome. Like all of us, I have had dreams about Tom Brady that I will take to my grave…ahhh, I may have said too much there. And his wife, well she’s not too shabby either. I mean Tom Brady isn’t aging. For god’s sake, he has a chin cleft! Do you know what I would do for a chin cleft? Brady is like a caricature of the high school superstar who also dates the hottest cheerleader, oh and he’s valedictorian too. No one says to themselves about that guy, “Man, I really hope he gets more in life”. I get it, if you are not a Patriots fan, Tom Brady is tough to root for and easy to root against. I get it — you don’t have to lie.
Everything I’ve learned about life, I learned from 80’s movies and here is what I know: We don’t root for the cool blonde guy with the awesome sleeveless uniforms from the Kobra Kai dojo. No way! We root for the skinny kid from Jersey who learned karate from the motel janitor where he lives (where the hell were the parents on this one?). We don’t root for the good-looking quarterback from the Alpha Beta fraternity, no way, we root for the outcasts and nerds backed by the historically black fraternity, Lamda Lamda Lamda. We want those nerds to win for once. In life, ultimately, we are all just rooting for the Goonies because that is who we are.
Okay, I really want to do more 80’s movie examples here but I digress and will leave it at this; If Brady had a forehead like Peyton Manning (or Sloth) and said “aw shucks” in a southern accent in post-game interviews, people would love him. No offense to Peyton, one of my favorite QB’s of all time, he’s just not as hot at TB12, so he’s easier to root for. I said it — people don’t like Tom Brady because he is too handsome, he has too much and you don’t perceive him to be Goonie material (even though by all records he’s a great teammate and person). Just be honest.
The Real Reason you Hate the Pats #3: Entitled Fans
Die-hard football fans are loud, it doesn’t matter the city. But the behavior of fans from city to city is largely the same — so what makes the Pats fans worse? I believe it’s a sense of entitlement from a portion of younger fans. If you are a Patriots fan in say, your mid-20’s, you grew up only knowing winning. These younger Patriots fans expect Super Bowls. These are the millennials posting Instagram memes like this one:
Yes, it’s true, my millennial New England friends, I’m sorry to turn on you here. Us elder fans, let’s say, over the age of 35, we remember losing and we know we will one day lose again. We remember sitting on metal bleacher chairs in Foxboro saying “well at least we have Andre Tippett” and complaining about curses. Here’s the thing though, if any team won as much as the Patriots, their fans would also be hated. A crazy die-hard fan from Cleveland is charming….now. I mean, who doesn’t love the dawg pound?
To all the Cleveland fans out there, remember the words of Julius Caesar, “All glory is fleeting”. You can be loveable losers or you can be winners, but you can’t be both. If Cleveland goes on to win five super bowls in the next ten years, I guarantee people will be crying “My gawd, Cleveland fans are the worst and the dawg pound is insufferable”.
So in the end, yes people hate the Patriots, it is true hatred, but their reasons are ALWAYS built on a foundation of lies, and I love it! Sports is the one place in society where some good-natured hatred is a whole lot of fun, and now I’m fired up for Sunday kickoff. Have a great season whoever you are rooting for. Go Pats! And you know what, what the hell — Go Browns! (they have the best fans).
