The Team America Loves to Hate

You know that team. The team whose fans consider anything less than a championship each and every year an abject failure. The team with the old, curmudgeon-y coach who just cannot stand to lose. The team with the clean-cut, golden-boy hero who splits his time between dating various movie stars, appearing on your least favorite commercials, and finding new, previously unimaginable ways to heap utter misery upon your hometown boys or girls. The team that is omnipresent, appearing on hats, t-shirts,
The Yankees, Notre Dame, Duke, the LA Lakers, Manchester United, Arsenal (COYS!), the Patriots and the Red Sox all fit this bill . . . wait, did I detect a hind of indignation? Did you just point your right index finger at your chest and say “Who? Moi? You mean my team? My beloved Red Sox, America’s loveable underdogs who beat the evil Yankee machine? My adorable Patriots and our 1,999th draft choice quarterback/heartthrob who has risen to the pinnacle of NFL success against all odds?” If that’s you, then you are a Bostonian (or bandwagoner) in denial. The sad truth is that every last one of the other (two) people who read the above sentence didn’t even flinch when I lumped the Pats and BoSox into the list of loathsome teams. That’s because, you, the New Englander in our midst, has graduated . . . or at least your team has. Your teams have finally become everything the rest of us despise. The collective roar that erupted across the nation when the game clock struck one second in the Arizona desert confirmed your teams’ entry into the pantheon of most hated teams. The entire non-New England portion of the country was rooting for Manning and the Giants . . . and that sentence alone should remove any remaining doubt that your team is now the villain. A New York team played the role of America’s underdog. Most Americans (myself, included) tend to root against New York teams on principle, considering the city a bastion of athletic evil. Yet the Patriots managed to evoke enough hatred that the New York Giants, for a four-hour period, captured the collective heart of Anti-Patriot Nation as we watched the dismantling of the Evil Empire before our eyes. This morning, most of the nation awoke with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside knowing that our Patriot-loving friends and neighbors were all still frozen in shock, having seen “The Best Team of All Time” crack under the pressure when it mattered most.
Yes, Bostonians, we abhor your teams. We cannot stand to see them win. A Rockies’ victory over the BoSox would have been second only to the Giants’ victory. Your teams are rich (see: BoSox payroll), they cheat (see: Belicheat), and their coaches look like infamous dictators, sort of (see: above). But all you’ve got to do is learn to embrace it. Wipe that indignant smile off your face and replace it with a smug grin. Stop denying the accusations of arrogance and accept them with pride. Take it from a Duke fan. The hatred means one thing and one thing only. Your teams are good. Really, really good. And they probably will be for a long time to come. Super Bowl XLII was much more than a victory for the Giants and an epic defeat for the Patriots. It was an inauguration. The Patriots may have lost the battle, but they can still claim victory. They (along with the BoSox), have entered an elite circle, a position that is loathed and envied among the rest of the sports universe.
And that is why, despite my glee in seeing the Pats crumble on the biggest stage of all, I am not entirely satisfied. That is why constant replays and YouTube videos of the Giants defense sacking Tom Brady fail to bring a lasting smile to my face. That is why the warm-fuzzy feeling is already giving way to nausea. The most essential element of that team is that no defeat, no matter how epic, and no collapse, no matter how devastating, can ever fill the bottomless pit of hatred felt by all opposing fans. Bostonians, take solace in the fact that all the ill will directed toward your teams is born of fear. We fear that next year (and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after), you will be back on the verge of watching your team compete for another World Series Championship or Super Bowl ring while we look on, helplessly, clinging to the only thing we have left: hate. But don’t ever, ever refer to one of your teams as America’s loveable underdogs again.