I tend to agree more with Hobbs. A lot of fans of our teams are just plain obnoxious.
With the Pats, while I'm a Pats fan and agree to a certain extent that Spygate wasn't that bad, the fan base's reaction to that situation is what truly forever ruined the country's perception of the Patriots. Until then, they were like the Spurs. Other fans didn't always love them because they didn't play the most exciting brand of football, but if you loved that sport, you had to respect that they were a hard-working, smart, humble, team-oriented, disciplined, well-coached and coachable team. And unlike the Spurs, the Pats didn't whine about everything. I think a good portion of the country was genuinely happy for the Pats that such an abused stepchild of professional sports became a dynasty.
It wasn't so much Spygate itself (although that admittedly tainted things) as it was Belichick's and then the fans' reactions to it that made us hated. Belichick pretty much wouldn't apologize, which grated on some people. And then our fans argued "you guys are jealous of our success so you made up a cheating scandal." Look, regardless of whether it's small time cheating or big time cheating, it was cheating. The Pats cheated. It was unnecessary cheating and it was the kind of cheating that's just over the line from what other teams did legally and there might be no actual difference, but it was clearly against the rules and we were caught redhanded doing it. People didn't call us cheaters because we won, they called us cheaters because we got caught cheating.
It's like if on a math test you're allowed to bring in notes with formulas but you're not allowed to bring in a calculator that has the formulas set up on it. There's not much difference in the two, but one is allowed but the other is not. If you get caught using the calculator, they didn't bust you because they're jealous of your math scores, they busted you because you broke the rules.
Then it got even worse when a lot of Pats fans and media people justified running up the score as "hey, we can do it if we want. You called us cheaters, you asked for it," as though the Patriots were the victims of Spygate, not the perpetrators.
(Incidentally, I had no personal problem with us continuing to play hard even in blowout wins. We lost in the AFC Championship the year before because we couldn't hold a big lead. The Colts lost in the playoffs this year in large part, in my opinion, because they took a game off when they could have been honing their game. The Patriots never risked that. Every player and every coach went balls out for 60 minutes of 16 regular season games, not wanting to ever let it get in our head that a game was over. Too bad it didn't carry over to the Super Bowl but that's another story.)
After our ridiculous, conceited and mocking reaction to the rest of the country when our team was caught cheating and then ran up the scores on teams it had clearly blown out - accusing everybody of jealousy and disrespect instead of admitting we were wrong and moving on - it was only natural for other teams to hate us.
The Red Sox this year got caught in a bit of this, too, because the arrogance coming from the Pats' fan base carried over into the Sox fan base. That, and, of course, the Pink Hat Brigade that took over. Suddenly, a lot of people saw Sox fans as arrogant front running bandwagon jumpers. Some of the criticism is deserved. There's a high degree of convergence between the Sox fan base and Pats fan base. And a lot of those people are arrogant.
To me, though, the irony, is that much of the Pink Hat Brigade was made up of people who weren't Sox fans before 2004 and weren't even necessarily from Boston. They were from all over the place, but always liked the Sox because there was such a loyal and long-suffering fan base and they wanted to get it on that. Cubs, Reds, Indians, Phillies, White Sox and other suffering team's fans related to us. When we won, everybody was ecstatic for us. And for a lot of people who always liked us a little, it suddenly felt okay to officially become a Sox fan. So people in other cities started to hate the Sox because people in their cities jumped on the Sox bandwagon after they won. So to me the irony was that Boston fans got the bad rap because frontrunners in other cities joined our bandwagon.
It came to a head last year when a) there was no denying we had a Yankee-level payroll and made Yankee-level revenue and made Yankee-level offers to free agents, b) our owners ran what had always been a team like a business, c) we were in first again, so the Brigade came out in full force and d) the ill feelings from Spygate tainted all Boston sports. That carryover hatred of the Patriots kicked into high gear in September-October of this year, right around the time we won the Series again. Some of those Pats fans who had been extremely cocky revelled in it and took unnecessary shots at other teams. Look, we have a team with a payroll four times that of other teams. We're supposed to win. We did, but we didn't do it gracefully. People were sick of Boston.
So, in the end, the Celtics simply had their resurgence and return to glory happen at a time when everybody was sick of all things Boston. Our season was getting ready to get kickstarted when the Patriots were undefeated and drawing hatred everywhere and the Red Sox had turned into a soulless monster to the point where people around the country were mad at themselves for being happy that we won it in 2004. The last thing everybody wanted was for Boston fans to keep their cockiness going all winter long.
Had the Celtics made the trades a year ago and been good last season, I don't think there would be too many people hating them, they'd be happy to see a once-glorious team return to prominence after two decades of embarassment. Instead, people hated the Sox and Pats so much they just lumped Celtics fans in with them, which wasn't hard, since people are constantly sporting Sox and Pats gear at Celtics games and there's a bigger reaction at the Faux-ston Garden to the Sox winning an April baseball game over the Blue Jays than there is to any number of great plays in a Celtics playoff win. The Celtics crowd is unfortunately filled with bandwagon jumpers who couldn't care less about the team for the last five years, and don't know how to be at a basketball game.
Nobody wants us to win not because they dislike the Celtics but because they're so [dang] sick and tired of hearing us talk about how great we are and how jealous everybody is of us. I think a lot of fans are graceful in victory, don't mock other teams and are just happy for our success. But I'd have to disagree with CelticsWhat - I don't think it's the vocal minority picked out by the media that is obnoxious, I think it's probably the majority of people who are actually supporting our team.
For me, personally, if I felt people did hate my teams just because they were good, I'd have no problem with that. I don't take it as a Badge of Honor, though, to be a fan of teams that are hated because a large amount of the other "fans" of my team are obnoxious punks. I'm as irritated as people in other cities are. It won't ever make me stop loving my team, but I don't want to have to defend them when they're winning, I just want to enjoy it.
Topic: So now we are the number 1 most hated? (Read 5933 times)