Super Blog

Before I begin I will admit to all readers: I am not much of an NFL fan. Sorry, but college football, I think, is far superior, even if the product varies in consistency. College athletics is WAR! Pro sports, on the otherhand, means paychecks. I, myself, am not completely consistent in this, either, as I do love professional baseball and my beloved Giants, Barry Bonds aside. But when it comes to football I'm somewhat less enthusiastic. Let alone the NBA, I could really care less about them. Just my opinion.

With that stated, as far as NFL teams go I admit my leanings are toward the Patriots. Why, because they've been good for the past ten years? Quite the opposite, in fact. When I was a child I had the athletic ability of the average tarantula (those who have been in Gabbs, NV for the annual tarantula migration know what I'm talking about), and when we would pick team names, me being the one who could care less at the time, I would ask of the others: "Which team sucks the most?" Unanimously, they would blurt out: "Oh, the Patriots are terrible!" and so I always went with the Patriots as my one-on-one team name. Leanings turned into an affinity and the next thing I knew my adopted team was in the Super Bowl, just months after I had proclaimed: "I just want to live long enough to see the Patriots in the Super Bowl; not to see them win, because I know that won't ever happen, but just to see them get there." Needless to say for about three years there I thought I was living on borrowed time.

The point? Well, I'm going to say a few things here. I don't think that they are too biased, but in case some other readers think otherwise that should provide some insight.

Aside from just wanting the Pats to win on principle's sake, I really, REALLY wanted to see history made this year. Of course, as all know by now, that didn't happen. My cohort and I tried out a new tavern for our Super Bowl festa, and for the first half or so there was one Giant's fan amongst a handfull of Pats fans. By the second half my comrade and I were the ONLY people rooting for the Patriots, and there were a hearty number rooting for the underdogs.

Why? I wanted to see history so badly, why did so many others want to see them fail?

I think that there is a little piece inside many, unfulfilled souls, who hate success, at least when other people achieve that success. Perhaps they hate their own lives, or just feel animosity toward anybody who nears achieving the unachievable. A part of me began to believe that people's internal negitivity drives their lust for those who are out there in the "thin air," pushing back the outside of that envelope and then hauling it back in. In other words, they are not where they thought they would be in life, and to see someone come oh so close just ravaged their very hearts. They weren't rooting for the Giants, they were rooting for the Patriots to fail; not because they're scary good, but because winning the big one this year would represent all those motivational things we are told in school that anyone can achieve, while they still work some menial job to help some guy in the South Meadows who probably doesn't even use his turn signal. In a way, the psyche brings the 18-1 Patriots down to "our" level a bit, and people seem to rather have that than use a 19-0 Patriots team to motivate themselves to bigger and better things.

Of course, I could be (and secretly hope I am) wrong, but there are precidents.

In 2004, when we played Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAAs the arena had a good number of Stanford fans awaiting their evening game. By and large they rooted for the underdog Wolf Pack. Were they rooting for us because we weren't a threat or even in the same bracket, or because we weren't the #2 team in the country?

People love an underdog, that's true. It helps build our own egos a bit, especially when the proverbial "we" are the underdog. But in this case, is this the popular reaction to two weeks (or five months) of hype, or a more extreme case of people rooting against history because they really hate to see a pure, unadulterated winner, or "perfects," in a world of OKs, goods, betters, and bests? Is "good" or "best" where people top out and fail to strive for even better than their best? If so, then is there a resentment toward those who do set the bar even higher? Good enough to beat my competition is all I have to be, and damn you if you come along and make me, my life, my attitude, look bad?

Or am I just a bit of a romantic idealist?