The New England Patriots were sitting high in September 2005…repeat champions from 2003 and 2004. They went to the 05-06 playoffs and lost to the Broncos in January 2006…would you have liked a threepeat had the Patriots won the Super Bowl XL, what if they won more titles until 2009?
The one I really wanted to see them win was the 2007 Super Bowl. The Giants team that won the Super Bowl that year was not the better team. IMHO if they were that good they wouldn’t have gone 10-6 during the regular season with only a +22 point differential for the season. For whatever reason they matched up well that year against the Patriots, having just barely lost to them 38-35 in week 17. None the less, they weren’t the better team.
Nope.
I rooted for the Pats in the 2001 SB against the Rams. From that point on, I wanted them to lose to the Panthers, Eagles, Giants, Seahawks, Falcons and Rams.
So, no three-peat; don’t even want a two-peat.
Nope. I rooted for them in Super Bowl 2004 because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was paying my salary.
In post 2004 Super Bowls, I rooted for them in the SB when they were the blue state team playing a red state team.
As a Giants fan, that made it all the sweeter.
…you take politics into account when rooting for a team in a Super Bowl? :dubious:
Short answer: nope.
Longer answer:
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I’m a Packers fan, with a couple of other teams that I also like (Seahawks, 49ers), so generally, I don’t strongly care who wins the Super Bowl if it’s not one of “my” teams.
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That said, if the Packers aren’t in the Super Bowl, I tend to pull for the team which has gone longer without winning the championship. I lived through decades of mediocre Packer teams (I’m too young to remember Lombardi’s Packers), and when they finally won in '97, it was thrilling. I like seeing other fans get to enjoy that kind of victory. (That’s why I was cheering for the Chiefs this past year.)
So, given that, I actually was OK with the Patriots winning the first time, as they had never done so before. But, after that, a dynasty gets tiresome to someone who isn’t a fan of that team. Is it historic? Sure. Do I want to see it? Nah. It gets boring.
Same here. If they were a class organization, they would have named their stadium Mo Lewis Field.
The Patriots were a virtually unchallengeable dynasty for the 2000s and the 2010s with the level of success that they had. They rose from a very regional team to a national brand, and polarized most of the football fan world around either being fans of them or despising them (and Brady and Belichek in particular.) Adding additional Pats Super Bowls wouldn’t have really changed much for them, but would have had significant negative effects for the rest of the league. Peyton wouldn’t have gotten rid of his reputation as a choker; the Steelers wouldn’t have gotten their sixth ring, Aaron Rodgers wouldn’t have settled the nagging doubts about whether he really was worth giving up the end of Favre’s career for.
There’s no real benefit to having any sports dynasty last for 10 years other than creating a villain, and it’s detrimental to the rest of the league as a whole.
Peyton would have been mentally devastated. Losing every year to the Patriots?
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Why not? The Yankees, Lakers do it? What’s wrong with that?
Because, while it’s great fun for fans of those teams, it’s not fun for fans of the other 29 teams. Eventually the other fans start to lose interest and the league begins to suffer. Overall fan interest goes down.
None of this is to say that the league should purposefully affirmative-action some championships the way of the other teams, of course - everything in sports ought to be earned. But it is usually best in the league’s interests for championships to be won by many teams instead of a few. It piques fan interest and makes them believe that any given year genuinely could be their year.
(Not all officials dispute your idea, though - David Stern, notoriously corrupt, once said that his dream NBA Finals was “Lakers vs. Lakers.”)
What don’t you understand about “detrimental to the league as a whole?”:dubious:
I’m a Yankees fan, but I understand the periods of Yankee dominance sucked for everyone else. And as a Giants fan, having a Patriots dynasty winning Super Bowls for seven years would have seriously sucked.
The Giants 1987 Championship was sweet because it was their first Super Bowl and first NFL Championship in 30 years (and first in my memory, since I was five when they won the previous one). But the 2008 and 2012 Championships were even sweeter, because both times the underdog Giants won against the mighty Patriots dynasty, coming from behind to beat them.