Patriots Fans are Voted the 2nd Biggest Complainers in the NFL and I Couldn't Be More Triggered
Source - Patriots fans are among the most passionate in the NFL, but they don’t hold back when it comes to playing the “victim card” with every bad call, any snub by the NFL, or egregious investigation the league may launch against the franchise.
Bad PI call? “The league is against us!” Someone discredits one of the team’s six Super Bowls since 2001? “They hate us cause they ain’t us!”
Add it all up, and Patriots fans rank No. 2 among NFL fanbases in terms of “Fans Who Complain The Most,” according to a recent survey by MI Bets. ... [T]he website surveyed over 5,000 fans across the country to find out which fanbases complain the most, and fans of the Dallas Cowboys earned the top spot. No one plays the victim card quite like fans of the Cowboys, who have been waiting since 1996 for the franchise to add another Super Bowl to its collection.
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But New Englanders and their victim mentality came in a close second. Fans of the Buffalo Bills (complaining on social media), the Chicago Bears (“bad” officiating) and Philadelphia Eagles (also “bad” officiating) rounded out the Top 5.
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This is the sort of thing that makes me lose faith in democracy. How in holy hell are we supposed to choose our leaders when we can't even get a simple survey right? Patriots fans are the second complainiest fanbase in the NFL? Second??? The fact we weren't a unanimous No. 1 on all 5,000 ballots proves Americans are incapable of self-governance and we should just bring back the royal family to run the place.
Sorry to break it to fans of the Cowboys, Bills, Bears and Eagles. You guys might have invented NFL complaining, but we perfected it. We've been First Team All-American for the last 20 years straight. And with good reason. We had no other option. We didn't choose bitchiness. Bitchiness chose us.
What do Cowboys fans have to gripe about? The Dez Bryant catch from six years ago?
Congratulations. Bellyache away. But do so knowing that this would've have cracked our Top 20 legitimate gripes.
Try being emotionally invested in the most successful stretch any team has ever had in the 100 year history of the NFL. And given the way the league is geared toward preventing exactly this kind of sustained excellence, this is the most impressive run any team in any sport has ever had. (Don't talk to me about the old Yankees, the 1960s Celtics or the Canadiens of any era when they couldn't lose their talent to free agency.) Only to have that success resented, discredited, questioned, punished and have the rules changed in order to prevent it. How much complaining would you do then?
Imagine winning your first championship only to have the world say you got lucky because of a made up rule "that had never been called before." Even though that same call had been made dozens of times and went against you earlier in the season. And then to have the league change the rule, like it somehow was an unfair advantage that benefited only you. Imagine winning your second, only to have your top conference rival go to the Rules Committee and outlaw the way you play defense. Try winning three championships in four years and be told that doesn't constitute a "dynasty," even though that's the exact word they used for the '90s Cowboys when they did it.
Try having two first round picks taken away. One for a minor infraction. The other for a completely false allegation that was concocted by that same conference rival, the team you just knocked out of the playoff and a league official who told your players "you're in fucking trouble" in the middle of a championship game. Something that was completely debunked by a middle school kid's science project and the tire pressure light on your dashboard every winter. Imagine having the league spend millions on an investigation and insist they will rigorously test the PSI in every football forever more and guard them with their lives. Only to never speak of it again or ever release the data like they promised. Then leave a bag of balls in the officials' hotel room in Boston and have to have the State Police rush them to the stadium by kickoff. Then try to wrap your brain around them suspending the greatest player in your franchise's history over all that, because he signed some merchandise for some low level employees and upgraded his personal phone without handing it over to an investigation that was hellbent on framing him.
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In between all that, try to picture your team being accused of cheating with bugged locker rooms, warm Gatorade, hacking the scoreboard, jamming the radio signals to the quarterback's helmet and a million other conspiracy theories so crazy they make InfoWars' nuttiest stuff sound plausible.
My guess is no group of people with any sort of loyalty could go through all that without becoming decidedly crankypants about it. But only one fanbase has lived it. And at least one of us has even turned the bitching into a nice career. Because answering all these charges is a 24/7, 365 full time job and you're always on call.
So say what you will about the Patriots franchise, the coach, the owner and all its success. Just don't ever say anyone out-complains us. We've earned it.