NEP 101

OK, before we start, I just need to take attendance.  Maroney?  OK.  Jackson?  Good.  Thomas?

Mills…Gostkowski…O’Callaghan…Mincey…Stevenson…Smith and Andrews?  Very good…did everyone get a syllabus on the way in?  Great, let’s get started.

First of all, welcome and congratulations on being drafted by the New England Patriots, the best team and the best organization in the best league in all of sports.  It’ll be my job as we go through this course to get you prepared for your new life as a Patriot.  I think you’ll find it to be more challenging than anything you’ve done up until this point, but ultimately it will be more rewarding as well.  Any questions at this point?  OK, then, let’s go right to the PowerPoint.

Gentlemen, if you don’t already recognize the three men in this picture, I suggest you learn their names quickly.  Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and Richard Seymour: the Holy Trinity of the New England Patriots.

First, this is Belichick. If you want to be a success in this league…and I see you all nodding your heads so I guess you do…you should learn to do whatever this man says without question, no matter how crazy it sounds.  If he wants you take some snaps at defensive back, or line up at tight end in a goal line situation, or practice your drop kick, do it.  Some time it’ll come in handy, I promise you.  If he takes time in training camp to explain what to do if the field should open up in mid-game and you’re attacked by an army of subterranean monsters, listen up.  I guarantee you that at some point in the season, you’ll find yourself in a battle with the Mole Men and you’ll be glad you were prepared.

This next slide is, of course, Brady. Some of you may have seen him walking the hallways of the stadium looking royally pissed off. He is.  He’s pissed off because he can’t handle the fact that he’s not the defending Super Bowl champion.  If you want to make it here, you’ll need to follow his lead.  He could be back in his condo right now, crawling across a carpet of lingerie models, but instead comes in here every day and works out like his life is a movie montage…Do any of you remember “Vision Quest?”…I didn‘t think so…How about “Rocky III?”  OK, good.  Picture the “Eye of the Tiger” sequence from “Rocky III,” that’s how hard Brady works all off season to be the best.  And that’s what’s expected of you, too.

Next, I want you to take a close look at Seymour; he is everything this team is about.  He sacrifices his own stats for the sake of playing the Patriots system. He’s a leader without doing that Ray Lewis “Hey, everybody come watch me being a leader!” thing.  He puts the team first.  He took less money to stay in New England.  He’s a nice quiet guy but he’d kill kittens to win a game.  Getting a ball carrier past him is like trying to get a pork chop past a wolf.

You’ll find information about the rest of your teammates in the course material.  Right now I’d like to talk about the press in this town.  As I click through the slides, I want to you familiarize yourself with them.  Almost without exception, they are bitter, rancorous, vindictive wretches.  When your coach was hired back in 2000, they unanimously predicted that he’d crash and burn.  And like NASCAR fans they kicked back, cracked open a beer, and waited for it to happen.  But the team won a Super Bowl.  So they called it a fluke.  Then the Pats won another, and another and now they’ve had no choice but to admit they were wrong.  And I’ll be explaining how you’ll need to watch your backs.  Because like a boss, or a cop, or my wife’s mother, sports writers are way more dangerous when you prove them wrong.

That goes for the electronic media as well.  One thing I want to prepare you for is the way they’ll ignore you.  No, it’s true.  I’ll prove it.  The night you guys were drafted, do you know what the top sports story was on Channel 7?  The Red Sox beating Tampa Bay.  Why?  Because the Boston media still doesn’t know what to do with you guys.  All the Patriots do are 1) win, and 2) avoid controversy.  And controversy is what sports talk radio thrives on.  Without it, they’ve got no game.  Later we’ll be playing some tapes of WEEI during the Pats’ 21 game winning streak, when the only Patriot they talked about was Ken Walter, the punter.

Then we’ll deal with the important topic of women.  Now that you’re in the NFL, you’ll be getting hit on more than at any time in your lives, and you’ll need to choose wisely.  For instance, you might hear that Rhode Island is nice, which is true if you’re partial to chicks that look like James Gandolfini.  This paper I’m handing out now is called Barstool Sports, THE leading sports publication in the city of Boston.  Study it carefully.  In it there are listings for upcoming Barstool events, which attract the finest collection of honeys on the Eastern Seaboard.  Expect a field trip or two later in the semester. 

Now I’d like to draw your attention to these next slides.  This motley looking collection is your fan base.  They might look like misfits, the indigent, the haunted, mental defectives, court-martialed GIs and the like…but don’t let appearances fool you.  These are the best fans in the league.  These people suffered through the years like no other fans in sports and lived to talk about it.  Maybe at times they get complacent and don’t cheer as loud as they should, mostly because the success they’re living through was beyond their wildest dreams even six years ago.  And they’ll go through hell every Sunday to root for you guys.  No other fans in sports have to put up with the three hour traffic jams to get to the remote wilderness outpost that is Foxboro MA, just to pay the highest ticket prices in the league and cough up $35 to park and $8 for a Sam Adams.  But they’ll sell out every game, even in “Day After Tomorrow” weather. 

And all you have to do to make it in the NFL is give these people what they want.  Work hard.  Be a good guy.  Stay the hell out of trouble.  Be a good teammate.  Don’t whine about how much money you make.  Make clutch plays.  Say stuff like “We’re going to take it one game at a time” and “I’ll do whatever the coach wants me to do.”  It drives the reporters nuts and the fans love it.

So hopefully by the time your done with this class, I’ll have taught you everything you need to know to be a New England Patriot.  One last thing though.  Chad Jackson?  Do you still have that white Yankees hat you were wearing on draft day?  OK, you’ll need to lose that.  Any questions?  Good.  Open your books to Page One…