The football related reasons have been covered: they are cheaters; they own my Steelers and they just win too damn much.
But there are even more non-football related reasons to hate the New England Patriots. Coming up with 10 was not hard. Deciding which reasons to leave off the list was near impossible.
So, feel free to reorder as you see fit. Here they are:
Reason 10: “New” England??? The name New England shows that the area suffers from Stockholm syndrome, which is characterized by an oppressed or kidnapped victim identifying with and even defending their oppressor or captor. Why on Earth would you name yourself after the tyrannical country you fled, if those circumstances were the primary reason you left? The only explanation for this is that their intention all along was to do to others the very thing they called unjust in England. In other words, they were not against oppression. They just wanted to be the oppressors rather than the oppressed.
Reason 9: Brady gets the model wife. No jealousy here from me. I have never thought Giselle Bundchen was all that attractive. Throw a nickel out the window and you’ll hit 25 women by accident that look as good or better. It’s just that the storyline of QB marrying the super model is clearly hate worthy.
Reason 8: Ted Williams. The late Red Sox Hall of Famer said that Joe DiMaggio was the best player he ever saw. DiMaggio was truly great. But he was not Willie Mays, period.
Reason 7: Boston Tea Party hypocrisy. Taxation without representation is what we have always been taught was the rallying cry. And yet to this day, if you are a resident of Washington DC, you have no full congressional representation, despite being among the most highly taxed regions in the country. You would think the area of the Tea Party revolt of all places would be allies against this injustice, but noooooooo. Not a peep out of New England in DC’s defense.
Reason 6: The Red Sox. They were the last team in baseball to get a Black player. Jackie Robinson came up in 1947. It would be 12 more years, in 1959, before the Red Sox would yield.
Reason 5: The Celtics. Beyond beating my Lakers year after year, how the city treated the Great Bill Russell when he played for them was shameful. For years he would not return to the city of his greatest athletic accomplishments.
Reason 4: The annoying accent. All New Englanders should be mandated by law to learn sign language so that we wouldn’t have to hear them talk.
Reason 3: They gave us Dr. Seuss. a straight up bigot who reinforced racist notions through his cartoons.
Reason 2: School desegregation. It was every bit as vicious in the this northern “Liberal” city as it was anywhere in the South.
Reason 1: They gave us the Bush family. I do not subscribe to the notion that either daddy or baby Bush weren’t so bad just because of how bad the current president is.
There you have them. I could have written 20 or 30 but no time or space. Of course, whenever one is this vested in hating a sports team, rest assured that team is very good. In this case, for the better part of the past 20 years, the Patriots have been even better than very good. They have been great, which is why this amount of hate is actually the highest compliment you can pay them. Hate is too valuable of a sports commodity to be wasted on losers. You will never hear anyone express frustration over how much they hate the Browns.
Any reasonable person must give the Patriots their due. But reason and hate cannot occupy the same space. You must choose one or the other and when it comes to the Patriots, I choose hate. They will always occupy a special place in my HOF (Hate of Fame), alongside Notre Dame Football, Duke Basketball, and of course those damn LA Dodgers.
So, for all the reasons alluded to here, this Super Bowl Sunday, I’ll kick back, raise a Bud Light to salute and root for PHILLY, PHILLY!
