[QUOTE=JohnnieEnigma]
Redsox fans have been true for years on end even when there were no wins in sight…
[/QUOTE]
Oh, cry me a fucking river. Chicago Cub fan over here. Shut up already–as if you know our pain…
[QUOTE=Barrett Bonden]
Let’s see, a local paper was excited that the hometown sports teams had strong seasons. Shocking! As for the fact that Patriots fans were stoked, some book was released on Amazon, the Pats were heavily favored, and a Minnesota Vikings fan is blaming the refs, why yes, that clearly is inarguable proof that Red Sox fans have gotten completely out of control. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
Do you bother listening to Sports Talk radio? As I said in my full post, your loud fans are now as stupid and obnoxious as our loud fans. Do you really deny this?
I wanted them to get their perfect season until I saw that they were trying to copyright, “19-0 Perfect Season”, at which point I wanted them to lose hard.
I think you have to be autistic or a fucking moron not to get why dominant teams end up generating more than the average level of dislike.
I don’t hate the Patriots. I just don’t support the AFC. I’m just an NFC fan. Nothing more than that. My support for the Giants was lukewarm at best. Again, nothing personal. At least it wasn’t Dallas. I seriously doubt I would have watched the game had Dallas been the NFC champion.
However, with two seconds left in the game, the NFL rule required the ball be snapped one last time. That’s how the game is played. Sure, the refs had to clear the field so that that one last play could be run, because that’s how you play the game. Yet, Belichick chose to leave the field of play and not return for the last two seconds. That said it for me. His lack of professional class to the fans, his team, the Giants, and most importantly for The Game said it all.
Belichick took his undefeated team all the way to the Superbowl, where they lost. That’s more than worthy of seeing him back to coach next year.
But he left the field with two seconds left and made no attempt to return to the field of play to finish The Game. If I were team owner, he would be fired.
[QUOTE=jimmmy]
25% on Sean Taylor. He was killed this year during the season. The NFL chose to honor him by having players wear his number a black circle 21 on their helmets. Non-redskin lovers like Dallas, Philly, and NYG did it - showing some humanity and class IMO. Everyone did this all the rest of the season. Except the Patriots. They chose to wear their teammate Marquis Hill’s 91 (as they had all season). The weekend after Taylor died, they wore 21 then took it off. Only Vince Wilfork (who went to school with and loved Taylor - true of anyone who knew him) continued to wear both numbers. This whole thing sat poorly with me (I thought Taylor was great). I would have preferred them to just do what the rest of the league did. But they couldn’t. Because they are the (imperfect) Patriots.
[/QUOTE]
He was a class act. I hope my kids grow up to be just like him!
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Oh, cry me a fucking river. Chicago Cub fan over here. Shut up already–as if you know our pain…
[/QUOTE]
Don’t stop! Believin’!
[QUOTE=JohnnieEnigma]
And after decades and decades of losing, how could you possiblyhave the audacity to accuse Red Sox fans of turning into “yankee fans”. That’s the biggest insult on the face of the earth. You need to take that back.
[/quote]
[Darth Vader]Search your feelings, you know it to be true.[/DV]
Sorry, but it’s completely true. Not that I enjoyed the Red Sox’ angsty act, but as winners the “Nation” has been really obnoxious (dealing in generalities, obviously, since none of the cliches about Yankees fans seem to apply to me). It took the rest of the country about two days to figure out that the Sox’ inferiority complex did not work well with a taste of success. To the rest of the country, and even to me, the Sox and the Yankees are the Capulets and the Montagues. They’re two sides to the same coin and basically identical. Some people prefer one to the other, but they’re sick of the whole show and of the way the Sox and Yankees get more attention than the rest of baseball combined. You can pretend to some kind of moral superiority if you like, but nobody’s buying it.
Hitler.
Somebody had to say it. Belichick is curt with everybody, but other than the cheating I’m not sure why people care about what he’s like as a person.
[QUOTE=mswas]
I wanted them to get their perfect season until I saw that they were trying to copyright, “19-0 Perfect Season”, at which point I wanted them to lose hard.
[/QUOTE]
They did? I hate to do this, but… cite?
[QUOTE=catsix]
Tony Dungy.
I have never, ever heard a single bad word uttered about the man, and who once said after a remark about being on The Best Damn Sports Show Period* that it was the last time they’d ever hear him utter that word.
Dungy is widely known to never yell or swear at his players, and to be a soft-spoken all around nice person.
[/QUOTE]
Except for that whole anti-gay bigotry thing. The appearance to raise funds for a homophobic hate group. And all this after the suicide of his own teenage son.
Or do you happen to consider those “all around nice” actions?
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Except for that whole anti-gay bigotry thing. The appearance to raise funds for a homophobic hate group. And all this after the suicide of his own teenage son.
Or do you happen to consider those “all around nice” actions?
[/QUOTE]
As a Bucs fan, I love him right up until I did a little googling about what you’re alluding to. Oddly, I can’t find anything he’s actually said that was anti-gay, but his support for the Indiana Family Institute certainly clouds my opinion of him. I’d always taken him as the non-judgmental sort of Christian.
I really just came back in here to respond to this:
[QUOTE=ADUSAF]
Thanks to last night’s choke job, he likely never will be, because it’s looking like a rebuilding year for them next season.
[/QUOTE]
Rebuilding? If losing in the conference championship game constitutes a rebuilding year for a team like the Pats, then maybe.
Their only core players not under contract for next year are Asante Samuel- who will probably be the richest cornerback in the league by July- Teddy Bruschi, Junior Seau, and Randy Moss.
Moss has all but promised to take a below-market deal to stay; Bruschi will almost certainly re-sign and finish his career as a Pat; which leaves Seau, who’ll retire and was mostly a spot player this season anyway.
Sure, Samuel has played better than any corner in the league over the last two seasons - yes, including the highly overrated Champ Bailey- but the Pats never seem to have trouble finding warm bodies to play d-back.
The offensive line will return intact, the WR corps (apart from Donte Stallworth, who became less and less relevant as the season went on) comes back intact, and Brady, Laurence Maroney and Kevin Faulk will all be back.
On defense, the entire backfield aside from Samuel is under contract, the linebackers won’t miss that much with Seau, and the defensive line won’t change at all.
So what, exactly, are they rebuilding? They’re not even going to lose more than one or two assistant coaches this year, unlike the last 3-4.
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Rebuilding? If losing in the conference championship game constitutes a rebuilding year for a team like the Pats, then maybe.
Their only core players not under contract for next year are Asante Samuel- who will probably be the richest cornerback in the league by July- Teddy Bruschi, Junior Seau, and Randy Moss.
Moss has all but promised to take a below-market deal to stay; Bruschi will almost certainly re-sign and finish his career as a Pat; which leaves Seau, who’ll retire and was mostly a spot player this season anyway.
Sure, Samuel has played better than any corner in the league over the last two seasons - yes, including the highly overrated Champ Bailey- but the Pats never seem to have trouble finding warm bodies to play d-back.
The offensive line will return intact, the WR corps (apart from Donte Stallworth, who became less and less relevant as the season went on) comes back intact, and Brady, Laurence Maroney and Kevin Faulk will all be back.
On defense, the entire backfield aside from Samuel is under contract, the linebackers won’t miss that much with Seau, and the defensive line won’t change at all.
So what, exactly, are they rebuilding? They’re not even going to lose more than one or two assistant coaches this year, unlike the last 3-4.
[/QUOTE]
By the way, they also have a high first round draft pick to use on an impact player, or more likely trade for multiple impact players - they got Wes Welker for a fourth rounder and Randy Moss for a second; I can’t even imagine what they’ll get for the pick if they deal it.
[QUOTE= Johnnie Enigma]
Yeah, I think you’re describing the Yankees here - and their fans. I mean, isn’t it the Yankees who have to ‘BUY’ their way into winning? Damn straight it is.
[/QUOTE]
TRIVIA TIME! Who has the #2 payroll in all of Major League Baseball?
[QUOTE= Johnnie Enigma]
And after decades and decades of losing, how could you possiblyhave the audacity to accuse Red Sox fans of turning into “yankee fans”. That’s the biggest insult on the face of the earth. You need to take that back.
[/quote]
Why in the hell would I take it back when it’s TRUE? Yankee fans’ sense of entitlement is pretty fucking annoying. But having won twenty-whatever WS titles, you can kinda expect that. Canadiens fans are classy, but you know that they, deep down, expect a title every seven or so years. Red Sox fans (and I live in Boston right now) have the exact same stinking attitude with two titles in recent memory. There’s no tradition of winning in Boston- there’s no God-given RIGHT to be at the top. They’re in a good contract cycle and that’s great. But they don’t win classy.
You want to know EXACTLY how it is? Boston fans have less class than the US Posedown Track Team from recent Olympic memory.
[QUOTE= Johnnie Enigma]
Redsox fans have been true for years on end even when there were no wins in sight…
[/QUOTE]
Maybe that’s true, but winning a WS or two definitely seems to have caused those “long-suffering fans” to spontaneously multiply.
I’d bet you dollars to donuts that of the 200 loudest asshole Boston fans you could find in five minutes at Game On, 175 of them couldn’t pick Mike Greenwell out of a fucking lineup.
[QUOTE=Bearflag70]
First, the Pats got dinged for cheating.
Then, instead of trying to improve their relations with the public, they took on a “fuck the world” smug asshole attitude. They ran up the score for no better reason than they could. Their press conferences were chock full of one-line diskish sports cliche responses like, “We just need to execute better” and “We’re just taking it one week at a time.” It wasn’t so much the cliches themselves, but the smug insincere delivery.
Nobody wants an asshole to win. Had they won with a bit of class and dignity, I wouldn’t care about the Pats at all. In fact, had they done that, I would have wanted the Pats to win it all to shut the '72 Dolphins up and deny my rival Giants a ring.
[/QUOTE]
What he said.
As for envy–puh-leeze. Until this year, I actually liked the Pats. It was the above described attitude that completely chilled me. If they’d taken a “mea culpa” approach and just went about the business of mending fences and playing ball, I’d have been a lot happier for their season. But for them to act so outraged that there were some credibility issues was beyond assholish.
Oh, and please don’t tell me again about how they gained little to no advantage by what they did. If that’s true, then they’re not suffering from lack of credibility–they’re suffering from good old-fashioned stupidity. Why risk so much for something that had so little reward to offer?
[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
By the way, they also have a high first round draft pick to use on an impact player, or more likely trade for multiple impact players - they got Wes Welker for a fourth rounder and Randy Moss for a second; I can’t even imagine what they’ll get for the pick if they deal it.
[/QUOTE]
Nitpick: they got Welker for 2nd and 7th round picks and Moss for a fourth.
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Nitpick: they got Welker for 2nd and 7th round picks and Moss for a fourth.
[/QUOTE]
Yup. I should learn to read, probably, at some point. 
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Except for that whole anti-gay bigotry thing. The appearance to raise funds for a homophobic hate group. And all this after the suicide of his own teenage son.
Or do you happen to consider those “all around nice” actions?
[/QUOTE]
What does the support for anti-gay groups have to do with the suicide of his son? You’re not holding him responsible for his son’s death, are you?
[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
By the way, they also have a high first round draft pick to use on an impact player, or more likely trade for multiple impact players - they got Wes Welker for a fourth rounder and Randy Moss for a second; I can’t even imagine what they’ll get for the pick if they deal it.
[/QUOTE]
Which makes me wonder if teams are going to ask more of the Patriots this year, since their last two trading partners ended up looking so stupid.
[QUOTE=Don’t Call Me Shirley]
What does the support for anti-gay groups have to do with the suicide of his son? You’re not holding him responsible for his son’s death, are you?
[/QUOTE]
I think the inference is that his son was gay, but I haven’t seen anyone else suggest that.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
Which makes me wonder if teams are going to ask more of the Patriots this year, since their last two trading partners ended up looking so stupid.
[/QUOTE]
Everyone ended up looking stupid on the Moss deal. The consensus around the league was that Moss didn’t have it anymore.