Boston.com Asks if it's Fun to Be a Patriots Fan
Boston.com – Is it still fun to be a Patriots fan?
Based on the premise that winning is fun by nature, the affirmative should be an easy answer. And it has been in the past. Often. …
But is it still as fun when winning is no longer a goal, but a mandate — and when Super Bowl-or-bust expectations seem to have sapped the joy from so much of the process? …
Is it fun rooting for a team when every game isn’t analyzed on its own merits, but is instead dissected under the microscope of what it means for the team’s aspirations for January and February? …
So is it still as fun even when the winning does happen? Compare it to the experience of nearly 17 years ago. More recently, compare it to the experience of being a Celtics fan this past spring. …
Is it fun when other fanbases are celebrating their victories, or their acquisition of players like Jimmy Garoppolo or Jamie Collins, and Patriots fans are left to speculate and stew in their frustration without fully understanding why it’s “in the best interest of our football team”? …
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Is it fun rooting for this team when fans of so many other teams get to enjoy the excitement of an eventful and electrifying offseason? When Butler, Garoppolo, Danny Amendola, Dion Lewis and Nate Solder all get contracts elsewhere – while Brandon Bolden, Joe Cardona, and James Develin are the guys the Pats re-sign?
Is it fun when other teams are throwing big money at big-play receivers, and the Patriots trade their homer-hitting wideout for a first-round pick – that they use to add an offensive tackle? …
And is it fun to look toward the start of training camp next month, when another season begins anew, and do so with little hope that a fresh start will fix any of this?
Forgive me for the length of that excerpt. But when you’re trying to reduce possibly the stupidest, most disconnected article in memory down to blog size, it’s hard to decide exactly where to cut. It’s not often you find such a perfectly executed example of a news outlet being completely out of touch with its readership. It’s truly perfection. Like Salieri said while reading Mozart’s music, change one note and there would be diminishment.
In all I counted 17 variations on “is it fun.” There might be more, but when I got to 17 I washed down a bottle of Ambien with Maker’s Mark to get the pain out of my head. (PSA: Do NOT mix sleeping pills and booze.) But I’m back now to answer the questions. And the answer is simple:
Fuck no, it isn’t fun to be a Patriots fan.
Now allow me the much more pertinent follow up question: Do Patriots fans care if it’s not fun? Fuck no, we don’t care if it’s fun.
You know what is fun? At least in the way Boston.com is using the term? Things with no stakes. Things where you have no emotional investment in the outcome. Things you don’t care about. A game of Candyland with your kids. Tee Ball. Olympic Curling. College bowl games in mid-December. Playing Fetch with your dog. TV bowling. If you want this article’s idea of fun, try Cape Cod League Baseball. You sit under the lights and watch college kids you’ve never heard of play a game you’ll forget all about and you might as well be sitting in Ray Kinsella’s cornfield.
You know who has a ton more “fun” in the classical sense than we do? Cleveland Browns fans. They don’t have the fate of the world riding on every move every week, offseason, in season and postseason. They wear dog masks and make jokes about what jokes they are, get drunk and go to work the next day. And celebrate things like trading for Jamie Collins and signing him to a long term deal on their way to 1-31. Well in New England, we lived that life for 40 years. Trust me. I haven’t forgotten. This is so much better you can’t even compare. I’ve lived the life of casual, carefree fun that comes from being irrelevant. Life where everything is magnified to hyper-relevance is a trillion times better.
Achieving greatness and making history rarely ever “fun.” Do you think Caesar was having a gay ol’ time as he crossed the Rubicon? Or the Pilgrims as they crossed the Atlantic? Do you hear a lot of yuks on the recordings of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon? Creation is an act of will, not a goddamned dorm party. Steven Spielberg almost went insane filming Jaws, my favorite movie of all time. Ask him if he wished he’d spent those weeks having “fun” on the beaches of the Vineyard instead of making an enduring classic work of art.
So whoever wrote and posted this can kiss our rings. I’ve written dozens of posts about how miserable this offseason has been. But don’t for one hot second think I’m not enjoying it. Pushing back against the haters and the anti-Patriots jihadists makes life worth living. And when they get back to the AFC championship game and, the good Lord willing, the Super Bowl and Ring No. 6, check back and we’ll let you know if all the months of no fun were worth it.