Intentionally Random...

So, I have beome a real Patriots fan lately. I really enjoy watrching them play. I remember being a kid, and there weren't too many Patriots fans when I was growing up. I am guessing it was because they mostly sucked. Breifly, when I was in junior-high, I remember people chanting "squish the fish" because the Pats were going to play the Dolphins for a chance at the super-bowl. Well, they got to the Super-bowl, if I remember, but they were crushed by the bears. Then they went back to sucking, as far as I can tell.

Well, I wasn't really a sports person growing up. I wasn't very athletic, and quite a bit of that was from physical laziness. But at some point, I discovered that you could just _watch_ sports on TV. I am not sure if it was the first March Madness that I saw or the Red Sox World Series bid in 1896, but somewhere around there I became an occasional sports fan. Maybe its because I don't respond well to lots of pressure--and there is a lot of pressure being a sports fan in New England.

Last year, the Red Sox were in another World Series bid, and they were serious about it. I can't remember the last time they were contenders two years in a row. Now they are working on thier third. Anyway, we all know they did win, but before they did, every-one was talking about "the curse." No World Seies win in 86 years, they must be cursed. It seemed the curse was an important part of the game! People were even saying it would be worse to be a Red Sox fan if the curse were broken! I think its ridiculous, but it goes with being a fan in New England.

See, we expect dissapointment. Its what I grew up with in my sports world. As a result, I always seemed to be rooting for the underdog. I went to college, and it turned out Rensselaer had a decent hockey team. So, I became a hockey fan. But still, RPI was an academic school, so while the sports teams were good, they were never great. My sports angst continued, and I thought (like the Red Sox fans afraid of losing the curse) that it was more fun that way. I remember RPI beating Harvard (the perennial league leader) in a crazy blowout. The emotions in the stands were absolutely nuts. It was a great high!

Then I went to Atlanta, where my girlfreind was going to Georgia Tech. The sport changed to football, but the angst was the same. Tech has a fairly decent team at times, but the school just doesn't put football at its highest priority (and thats how it should be in college) so the team wasn't exactly a powerhouse.

Anyway, I married that girl, and she said she wanted to go to Graduate School, and she picked the University of Michigan. Oh my goodness, it was a sports experience that neither of us understood. We said we would never be real Michignan fans (it was grad school, not our alma maters!), but watching winning teams kind of grew on us. We got season tickets for football and hockey (we shared them with some friends--we did study some of the time!) and proceeded to wonder if they would ever lose.

In Michigan, I experienced something that in all my time in New England I had never understood. Its better to win. The angst of being the underdog isn't all it is craxked up to be. No, better to go to a game expecting a win. Sure, you still loose sometimes. But the team always plays hard, and if they loose, its because some other team played a great game. Your team is still great. No, being that Red Sox fan of the past is like being bipolar. Yea, the highs are amazing, but they have medicine for you for a reason.

This is what the Patriots are bringning to New England, and I don't think anyone here can believe it. They talk about how hard it is to keep winning in the NFL of today. Well, maybe the Patriots players all come from places like UofM. Where winning is what you expect.