An Open Letter to Young Boston Sports Fans Who Love the Patriots
If you’re one of the hordes of young Boston sports fans who count the Patriots as your favorite team, please read this.
I’d like to start by defining the term “young Boston sports fans.” For the purposes of this piece, that’s any fan that’s only ever know large-scale winning in Boston sports. Your fandom started in the early 2000s, with the first part of the Patriots dynasty, the 2004 curse-breaking Red Sox World Series, and the Celtics and Bruins Championships that followed a few years later.
And while that World Series and those Celtics and Bruins Championships were cool, it was the Patriots that were–and are–your first love. Maybe you named your dog (or your kid!) Brady. Maybe your name is Brady. Maybe you have the “In Bill We Trust” bumper sticker on your car or the Belichick-drinking-OJ avi on your reply-guy Twitter account. You’re a Pats die hard, through and through.
And your life is now a living hell.
An Open Letter to Young Boston Sports Fans Who Love the Patriots
I feel your pain. I came of age as a Boston sports fan in the ’80s. My favorite team was the Red Sox. Sure, they made it to the World Series in ’86. But you know how that one ended. They were a middling AL East team in the early ’80s, won the AL East a few times to round out the ’80s, then spent the bulk of the ’90s as an occasionally competitive but otherwise forgettable franchise.
And that, my young Patriots fan, is where your franchise is now, in the post-Brady, Bill Belichick twilight: occasionally competitive but otherwise forgettable. The good news is this won’t last forever. The bad news is, since you’ve only ever know winning, it’s going to feel like it lasting forever. As I’m typing this, your Patriots are 1-5 and might not win another game this season. That’s tough.
I coped with my favorite team sucking by learning about and rooting for other teams. I became a fan of the Dodgers in the late ’80s because I found their history to be fascinating: Jackie Robinson in ’47, beating the Yankees in ’55. Maybe it’s time for you to find a new team to get behind. Old school New England football fans rooted for the Giants back before we had the Patriots. There’s history there.
Or maybe just take a break this fall and come back and give it another shot next season. Better yet, just stop watching football altogether. 18 minutes of actual action in a 3-hour game where virtually every play is bookended by commercials? You can do better. And the Patriots can do better. But it’s going to be awhile before they do. So buckle in, young Patriots fan. It’s a hard road ahead.
Maybe it’s time to swap out that Twitter avi.