Tag: football

My Futile Fight to Divorce the Atlanta Falcons

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“Are you going to watch the NFL draft tonight?” John asked me.

“Of course,” I said, “and I’ll probably shout, ‘I want a divorce from this Gawdforsaken franchise’ again this year. It’s an annual tradition in my household.” 

Are you strapped into the fandom of a futile franchise? “What do you mean strapped?” The first image we have of being “strapped in” is that of a pilot, heading upward in for a flight into the wild, blue yonder. Now picture a pilot being strapped into a vessel headed downward. That is the futile flight the passengers on board the Atlanta Falcon have experienced lo’ these many years. 

Why do I continue to cheer the Atlanta Falcons on forty-eight years after I randomly chose to cheer them on when I was nothing but a seven-year-old, stupid kid who randomly pointed at them and said, ‘That’s the team I will cheer on.’ 

“You don’t choose your favorite team,” says a sentiment in Korean sport, “your team chooses you.” I get that, if we’re from Foxboro, Santa Clara, Cleveland, or the surrounding areas, it kind of makes sense. We have regional pride, personal history, and social bonds formed by everyone who forced us to cheer on the local team. What if we’re from an area, three to four hours’ drive time from the nearest professional organization, how they choose us? 

I was seven-years-old when I chose the Atlanta Falcons as the team I would cheer on for the rest of my life. I didn’t choose to cheer them on for the rest of my life, but that is what happened. The stadium the Falcons call home is fourteen hours’ drive time from where I live, I didn’t know anyone who cheered them on, and I’ve met very few fellow fans since. My dad didn’t know much about professional football, and he admitted he’d barely even heard of the Falcons. The Falcons also didn’t have any of my favorite college football players on their roster at the time, and they’ve only had a handful of them since. I had little-to-no connection to the Falcons at the time, and I still don’t in all the ways we’ve outlined here.

We All Like Winners

The first thing the uninformed, unaffiliated seven-year-old fan routinely does is cheer on the team their dad does. If they are unable to formulate that connection, they choose to cheer on one of the closest teams they can find. The final determining factor for them is the success of the team. When you’re seven-years-old, your favorite team says a lot about you, and you want people to think you’re a winner. In the 70s, everyone’s favorite team was either the Steelers or the Cowboys, or if you were naughty, you cheered on the Raiders. Those teams were the winners in the late 70s, our formative years, and everyone I knew selected one of those three teams. I met a few Vikings fans, but the general sentiment on them was that they weren’t good enough to win the Super Bowl. I knew one Dolphins fan, but he received some grief for cheering on a franchise whose time had passed. 

I decided to cheer on a team who didn’t have a past, a present, or future. A website called Quick Report lists the Atlanta Falcons as “the fourth worst NFL franchise of all time.” Another outlet called The Top Tens rates the Atlanta Falcons franchise as the 46th worst franchise in professional sports.

My favorite characterization of me is that I chose a team, independent of any influence, as a testament to the strong sense of individuality I obviously exhibited at a very young age. They were mine, all mine, and I didn’t have to share them with anyone, because no one else wanted them. Did I have an enviable streak of individuality at a young age? I did not when it came to books, music, movies, and other entertainment mediums. I liked what the cool kids told me to like, and when they turned on those players in the industry, I turned with them. I was not immune to peer pressure by any means, but I chose to thwart it in this one instance. Does that make sense to you, because it doesn’t to me. 

The only theory I have that makes any sense is color. I liked the pretty colors they wore on their uniforms. The Atlanta Falcons franchise chose to wear Red, white, and black. These were the same colors as my favorite college football team, the team that represents my states, and the university I attended. I’ve only purchased four cars in my life, all of them were either red or white, with black trim. Those colors obviously appeal to me. If you’ve followed the history of the Falcon’s uniform choices, however, you know they’ve switched the color of their uniforms from black and silver to now black, red and silver. I didn’t switch with them or from them. Why?

Philosophical and Emotional Layers

The next logical entry is the “lovable losers” tag that we used to apply to the Chicago Cubs franchise. I submit that the worst business move the Cubs ever made was winning the 2016 World Series. Why, because a large segment of the nation, outside Illinois and the surrounding region, cheered the Cubs on because they were lovable losers. They won the World Series in 1908, and they waited 108 years to win it again. Five generations of Cubs’ fans knew nothing of championship rings, and they loved it. They loved it so much that if we were to talk about their latest losing streak, their foibles in the post-season, the Cubs’ fan might chuckle with us. They knew all about it, and they loved it so much it was almost a crafty marketing gimmick, enhanced by the stories of jinxes, including the Curse of the Billy Goat, the Black Cat Incident, Steve Bartman Incident, and the Bernie Mac Jinx. The Falcons are nearing sixty-years as a franchise, and the franchise has the Eugene Robinson incident and, of course, 28-3. 

If the Atlanta Falcons fan, the WE, can make it past 28-3, what does that say about us? It suggests resilience, loyalty, and a sense that we’re all sharing in the struggle. Unwavering support is a badge of honor. If you’re a superfan, it becomes a part of who you are. It’s not just a preference, or it no longer is, it’s a reflection of your values, memories, and experiences. I becomes we, they becomes us, and those guys become our fellas fighting in the fields for glory. 

“I think we’re going to draft an Edge rusher this year,” we say, “because that’s been our greatest need for almost a decade.” Again, I know very very few Falcons’ fans in my locale, about fourteen-hours’ drive time from my home, so when I say, “we” and “us,” I’m not sharing a perspective with anyone I know, except the far-flung writers on a Falcons message board.

When a team like the Falcons become us/we, the theys on message boards drop “28-3!” on us in a snarky, smug way that attempts to force us to probe the tapestry of our being. The truly sad thing is that it took me a while to realize that the personal pain I felt, after that infamous choke job, was actually and factually absurd. It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t actually on the field, missing a crucial block, throwing a crucial interception, snapping the ball with too much time on the clock, and electing to pass rather than run. I didn’t personally do any of that, I see that now, but I didn’t see that their (not our in this particular case) loss was not a reflection on my character. I actually had nothing to do with that loss. If it’s hard for you to grasp the idea that a rational, logical person couldn’t easily separate himself with the failure of images of football players on TV, you’ve never been, or known, a superfan.    

As difficult as it can be for a superfan to disentangle himself from the emotional entanglements that emphasize his existence, I am making strides. I now write things like this, “I realize I know little-to-nothing about the day-to-day decisions on personnel and any of the intricacies involved in their decision-making process. I’m not there for the day-to-day, I don’t see these players in practice, and I don’t know them personally.” I wrote on “our” Atlanta Falcon’s bulletin board, “but I think the decision they made was a mistake.” In that disclaimer, I effectively gained some psychological distance from the ‘us, we, and our’ lexicon we superfans usually use. 

I dropped that disclaimer on the billboard page many times, because I was trying to objectively say that I know my opinion is not only relatively and comparatively uninformed, and I know my opinion doesn’t matter, but I have to write it somewhere. No one ever replied to any of my posts. My guess is that this disclaimer might have been a buzz kill, because we all kind of know we don’t know squat, compared to the owner, the GM, the coach, and all of those in the hierarchy responsible for personnel decisions, but no one admits it. Such a disclaimer might also “pop” the delusion that we all know what we’re talking about, because we read it, watched it, and saw it in the games, so we know. Their ambivalence to my posts might also have something to do with the idea that it’s so obvious that we don’t know what we’re talking about that it really doesn’t need to be said. 

Here is another element to the post 28-3 Falcons’ loyalty, if we’re going to vicariously partake in whatever glory they achieve in victory, we must also commiserate with them in pain. Wrong, watching football on TV is supposed to be something we do to pass the time, and it should provide entertainment to our lives, nothing more and nothing less. Wrong, it’s not entertaining, it’s football. It’s not life and death, and some part of me knows that, but it’s often the difference between a smile on the face for the rest of the week, and a “We suck!” Mr. Grumpy Face week. 

“I look forward to [the offseason],” a man named Ryan Ray says in the GQ article cited aove, written by Tom Lamont. “The six to eight weeks when I don’t have to focus on anything to do with this football club. I long for it.” Ray also said, “Sometimes I wish I could just sit there without any bias [while watching a game], without any interest—but it’s not me. I’m tribal.”

I’ve been there Ryan Ray, and I feel you. I’ve watched numerous football games involving other teams, and I know how entertaining this game can be, when I have no rooting interest. I wish, like Ray, I could have fun watching a Falcons’ game and appreciate them from a distance. I wish I could sit back and appreciate the athletic exploits of Falcons’ players the way normal folks do, but when Falcons’ players succeed it’s nothing more than a relief that they didn’t fail yet again. I marvel at other players play at peak performance where the difference between winning and losing can be mere inches, or the subtle juke the runner puts on a defender that only a true fan of the sport can appreciate. When it’s all on the line, and my bias is in full force, I only experience abject failure, misery, and roughly three hours of what it must feel like to have clinical depression.

“If they make you so miserable, why don’t you just switch teams?” the non-sports fans might ask from Mount Simpleton. My dad asked me this question referencing the video games that made me scream like a lunatic. “If they make you this miserable, why don’t you just shut it off?” We laugh so hard at his simple-minded question that we didn’t even bother answering him. He didn’t get it. ‘You can’t just shut a game off, because you lost,’ was probably what we should’ve said. ‘That’s the whole reason we keep playing, to eventually and finally beat it. If you’re a gamer, you know this mindset without knowing that beating a game easily and often is actually kind of boring. If you can find a game that is so hard IT CHEATS! that’s the game you will play, to figure out, forever. We don’t quit working after we make our first million, that’s just the start, we don’t dump a lover when they start acting obnoxious, because their drama kind of, sort of makes them more dramatic, traumatic, and interesting in a way that’s tough to describe, and we don’t stop cheering for a professional sports team just because they’re 114 games under .500, and 10-14 in the playoffs without a ring. That’s the very reason to continue to cheer them on for life, because it says something about our character that we stay loyal to them no matter what. “NO MATTER WHAT happens!” Even if it means upping our Tricyclic Antidepressants (TCAs) and Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs) on those three special Sunday hours. It’s all worth it. “No, it’s not!” It is to me, is what I’m telling you. Wait, what we’re talking about again? Oh right, shut up!  

We’re passionate “prisoners [who are so] accustomed to our jails that we refuse means of escape,” Lamont writes, “Logic is not meant to be a part of the true fan’s equipment.” 

If we did our research, and we do, every year, we find that some teams just do it better. That’s rough, tough, and difficult to accept, so we think, “They CHEAT!” They don’t, but it’s easier to say that “and I can back it up!” than it is to sit through the incredibly long and boring NFL Draft and know that some teams obviously have better scouting staff members, General Managers, coaches, and all of the others in their hierarchy who help select the best player for their team. It’s easier to suggest something nefarious is going on than to admit that the franchises in Kansas City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco are going to make “the perfect” decision for their team for the next four-to-five years.

“Why can’t we find those guys?” we shout at the screen every year. We’ve even gone so far as to hire those who used to make those draft picks for their other franchises, and they somehow lose that magic touch when they go to work for us? How does that happen for 58 years? 

“On paper,” Lamont writes, “Intense fandom is absurd.”

If the Atlanta Falcons were a company that had a fifty-eight-year record of making poor decisions, I would’ve sold stock in their company so long ago I wouldn’t even remember owning it. If it were a TV show, movie franchise, or band that put out an inferior product year after year, we would’ve stopped enduring their stench of failure long ago. If our child continued to make such poor decisions, we’d have a “Come to Jesus” sit down moment with them. If it were a spouse, we might divorce them. Why don’t we seek a divorce from our team?

Lamont, quotes a therapist, saying, “People often seek me out because they are feeling stuck in a painful emotional pattern that just won’t let go.” She was probably speaking more generally, but we could easily attribute that quote to our super fandom. The therapist also said when she heard of some suffering from a mean case of super fandom, it reminded her of the mindset of those in a cult.  

She described a commonly reported reason that people give for staying in cults: the sunk cost fallacy. “People can’t leave because they’ve spent so much time and money and energy,” she explained. I read this, and I reread it, and it tells me that some of our deepest affiliations aren’t calculated but emerge from the fabric of our lives.

She later regretted likening it to extraction from a cult. “The situation,” she said, “had more in common with addiction, the high highs, the low lows, the swearing-offs, the shame-inducing returns to the cookie jar.”

“There is a fascinating page on NamuWiki, the Korean-language Wikipedia, that outlines the philosophical case against abandoning one’s team,” Lamont writes. “The act is known in Korea as 팀 세탁—team laundry—and it is understood to involve a paradox. You care enough [that] you want to put an end to your suffering, [but you also] care enough [that] you can’t.”

Some of us grow wiser as we age, and we learn when, where, why, and how to expend our resources. When it comes to sports, I’ve learned, and I’m still learning, with massive amounts of failure in this regard, how to not care so much. Wisdom has taught me that it’s just better for my mental well-being to if not “turn it off” as my dad might suggest, but to lower the volume on all my caring. The Salvation Army suggests that “caring is sharing”, and it’s true in most cases, but caring can be scary at times too. It should be fun to watch “my” guys play football, but it’s not. I do not enjoy it. So, I tape the game on the DVR, and I go outside and play catch with the boy. Then, I check the score of the game on one of my devices. If I find that we won the game that day, I watch the game and vicariously partake in the joy of victory. If they lose, I delete the entry on my DVR. Seeing the final numbers (the score) on a screen, gives me even more distance from the foolish notion I have that some of this final score if “my fault”. It’s also so much less painful than watching their total destruction, or long, slow destruction occur in real-time. If I were part of self-help Falcon fan group session, I would suggest all participants engage in this behavior for better mental-health.   

Some of our more obnoxious group members might suggest for even better mental-health, we should all consider a messy, complicated divorce from the “fourth worst NFL franchise of all time” and “the 46th worst franchise in professional sports”. If some of them could do it, I might applaud them, because I wouldn’t be able to do it. I will continue to cling to the handrail of this slowly sinking ship, in this tragic movie of my demise, where everyone in the audience is screaming, “Just jump off!” I’ve spent so much time, energy, and misspent passion on this inept franchise that even if you were to offer me a life raft, I might say, “Eh, I think I’m doing just fine right here.”

This might come as a shock to most superfine, but it doesn’t really matter what team we choose to cheer on. When fair weather fans tell me why they switch teams with regularity, they basically say, “I choose to cheer on winners, because I’m a winner.” I could say, ‘I’d like to see the science behind that,’ but I know it’s such a ridiculous statement that it’s not even worth challenging. Yet, is saying, ‘I choose to stick by my team no matter what happens, because it’s a testament to my character,’ just as ridiculous? Yes, it is. It makes no sense that I could never follow through on a complete divorce either, even though the temporary separations I’ve achieved over the years have proven great for my mental health. It’s illogical, absurd, and whatever adjectives we apply to superfans, but it is a part of our personal constitution that we stay loyal no matter what happens, and we think less of those who don’t. 

Ain’t Talking About Sports 

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Baseball 

I used to be a baseball guy, a Major League Baseball fan, until I wasn’t. And it wasn’t the 1994-1995 strike either, as it was for so many of my friends. I was a long-suffering Atlanta Braves fan, and the Braves were in the World Series four out of six years in that era. I was then glued to the McGwire v Sosa v Maris run. I attended the 8/30/1998 game against Atlanta in which McGwire hit #55. I remember feeling torn, because he hit one off my team, but I felt a part of history. If he broke Maris’ record, I rationalized, I could always say I attended #55. No, from about 1985 to about 1998, I was a huge baseball fan. 

Something happened shortly after the strike that conspiracy theorists believe helped Major League Baseball regain popularity. Some suggest the steroid era loosely existed between the late eighties to the late 2000’s, but most baseball fans would suggest that it only became an issue requiring attention between 1997 and 2000. Some diehard baseball fans suspected that something was amiss early on. Something intangible and tangible changed about the game. It was no longer a secret, but many in my inner circle of MLB diehards chose to deny it was happening.  

I don’t remember ever considering the idea that an MLB player might take performing-enhancement drugs a moral issue in a larger sense, but during the 1997-2000 run, Major League Baseball became Sega, Nintendo, or Playstation baseball. In just about every console’s baseball game of that era, the obsessed gamer found ways to artificially edit a player’s attributes to monstrous proportions, and we believe the upper echelon either encouraged such actions in Major League Baseball, or they turned a blind eye. 

Some deniers argued that steroids can’t help a major leaguer see the ball better, and they don’t help a hitter turn his wrists quicker. Those arguments are true, but we argued that they could make an average major leaguer better, a good major leaguer can become great, and a great one can break every record on the books with steroids. The question of the era gradually shifted from why would they take steroids to why doesn’t every Major Leaguer do it? If everyone took steroids, it would level the playing field, right? Yes, until we measure their ability against past performance. The best argument against steroids I heard at the time was most barstool debates about baseball involve its storied history. Was Ty Cobb better than Babe Ruth? Was Ted Williams better than Joe DiMaggio, and has any modern star earned a mention in those debates? Other than some subtle changes involving spit balls and the height of the mound, the game largely remained consistent for over one hundred years, until the steroid era. 

The question I always asked, in debates with agnostic and apathetic friends, was are Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens that much better than Roger Maris, Roberto Clemente, and Sandy Koufax? Statistically, it appears as though they were, but to level the playing field Maris, Clemente, Koufax we probably would need to go into a time machine and give them some steroids. 

It was an era of “no one’s guilty, so everyone is” that stated “we all know that  Greg Maddux and Ken Griffey Jr. are on the juice. Every Major Leaguer was.” I didn’t believe that. I thought some of those big names weren’t, and I held them in high regard for avoiding that temptation. I honored them for playing the game clean, but we were never sure who was clean and who wasn’t. Plus, if everyone else was on the juice, why wouldn’t they join in, to level the playing field? This question of the morality of taking steroids was such a confusing, complicated one that baseball fans debated it ad nauseam, and it led to a level of cynicism that ruined the core of the game for some of us. 

FOOTBALL

On a separate but similar note, the NFL passing and receiving records are now an absolute joke. Whatever barstool chatter we once had, regarding the comparisons of one generation’s superstars versus another’s is so ridiculous now that I can’t imagine anyone is still having them. On the current, NFL’s all-time passing yards list, Joe Flacco and Kerry Collins surpassed a man that many, who saw him play, declare the greatest quarterback of all-time Johnny Unitas. Flacco and Collins are also ahead of Joe Montana, a quarterback who many of my generation bestow that crown. Flacco and Collins had fine careers, but those of us who saw them play never thought they would end up in the top 20, and no one imagined that they would boot Joe Cool and Johnny U out.

At one point, we can only guess, The NFL Rules Committee decided that their game is not a tradition-rich game in the vein of baseball, and they eviscerated the comparative-analysis barstool discussions for the now. With NFL ratings constantly topping previous years, it’s obvious The Rules Committee made the right choice, and the collective ‘we’ have determined that we want now too, and the who’s better now is the only discussion we can have, as it’s ridiculous now to debate the statistical merits of current players versus the past.  

Writers and broadcasters state that Tom Brady’s highly disciplined regiment and diet are the reasons that he’s been able to have such a long career. That is a huge part of it, but no one asterisks that conversation with modern rules against a defense touching a quarterback outside legally designated areas. Couple that with the updated pass interference penalties, and the defenseless receiver penalties, and you open up the game, and make every passing record nonsense when compared to previous eras. Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Peyton Manning compiled impressive stats throughout their respective careers, but were they that much better than Joe Montana and John Elway, Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach, or Jonny Unitas and Sonny Jurgensen? The NFL game is so different now that you just can’t compare different eras in true side-by-side comparisons, without adding five asterisks at the very least. 

Thanks to those rule changes, Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton’s records will never be threatened, because very few teams run anymore, except to throw the defense off. Why would you run? I’ve read well-researched articles stating even running to throw the defense off is a waste of time. I disagree with those articles, but I wouldn’t say they’re ridiculous.        

Lynn Swann played in an era when cornerbacks, safeties, and linebackers could maul a player at the line and rough them up throughout their route, and no receiver who valued their career went over the middle. Due to the rules at the time, Swann could only play nine years, and his opportunities to catch the ball often occurred only on third down. To catch Shannon Sharpe at #50 on the list of most receiving yards of all time, Swann would’ve had to double his career total. The NFL rules tightened up on that during Rice’s era, but they became ridiculous during Megatron’s and Julio’s current era.               

I’m a fan of NFL teams, but for some reason individual players ruin teams for me. I loosely cheered on the Packers for much of my life, but I really enjoyed the Brett Favre era. Favre was confident/brash/arrogant, but I loved it. The same characteristics could be applied to Aaron Rodgers, but I dislike him for his play on the field, and I’ve disliked him for as long as he’s played. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything else he’s done. I loosely cheered on the Matt Hasselbeck-led Seahawks, but I can’t stand Russell Wilson or Pete Carroll. My fickle nature is not based on winning or losing either. I liked Tom Brady and Peyton Manning throughout their careers, but I couldn’t stand Terry Bradshaw or Joe Montana. I also liked Ben Rothlisberger and Steve Young, so my preferences are not team specific either. Every time I think I’m above the soap opera of the NFL, then I go about disliking some players for no clearly defined reasons.     

HOCKEY 

As hard as I’ve tried to force myself to like hockey, I just can’t. I appreciate how grueling it is, and I respect the idea of how much mastery the game requires. I respect the idea that it might be one of the toughest sports to master, and how those playing it might be some of the toughest athletes in all of sports, but I just can’t force myself to enjoy a match.    

Basketball 

Magic v Bird was my entry point into the NBA. I followed the NBA loosely before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were drafted, but I don’t remember ever sitting down and watching a game tip to :00. I knew of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dr. J before Magic v Bird, but Magic v Bird was the beginning of the NBA as far as I was concerned. I watched their regular season matches with mild amusement, but their Finals’ matches were must-see-TV for me.  

Save for some Bad Boy years, a disruptor became the game in the form of Michael Jordan. I watched Magic v Bird from the comfort of my home, but Michael Jordan in the Finals was an event that required get-togethers, on par with crucial Cornhusker games and Super Bowls. The roles reversed and the Bad Boys, the Knicks, and Magic v Bird became the disruptors, or the side show. Every male and female I knew during that era loved or hated Michael or Jordan. Few called him Michael Jordan, and no one, other than a few announcers, called him Mike. He attained the one-name status previously enjoyed only by entertainers like Cher or Madonna. Just about every male I knew wore something with his iconic image on it, or they dribbled a basketball with his name on it, while sticking their tongue out.  

After Michael left the game, I gravitated to Chris Webber and the Kings v Lakers, but it just wasn’t the same. I also held on, somewhat, to watch Tim Duncan and the Spurs team game, then Chauncey and his defensive Detroit Pistons, but the epitaph for my love of the NBA was Game 6, 2002. 

Great NFL Coaches: Belichick and Walsh

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“The Patriots won, because they cheated,” Patriots’ haters say when asked to explain the unprecedented level of success the Patriots enjoyed between 2001 and 2018. I am not a Pats fan, but I am not a hater. I did not enjoy the long-term level of success they achieved, but I did appreciate it from afar. As much as I’d love to join the chorus of the haters, the cheating charge doesn’t explain the nine Super Bowl appearances made in the Belichick, Brady, and Kraft era. Even if they were 100% guilty of the offenses the NFL found (“And those were the times they got caught!” haters add) it doesn’t taint their six (SIX!) super bowl trophies. Even the most outspoken Pats hater has a tough time explaining how underinflated balls helped the Patriots appear in eight straight AFC Championship games between 2011 and 2018. “Tom Brady could grip the ball better,” they say. So, underinflated balls explains how the Patriots managed to achieve the only undefeated 16-game regular season since 1972, and the fact that they came one miraculous play away from beating the hottest team in football that year? During the Kraft, Brady, and Belichick era, the Patriots completed 19 consecutive winning seasons from 2001 to 2019, and they boast a .784 winning percentage against their division opponents. In Brady’s 18 seasons as a starter, the Patriots played in 50% of those Super Bowls, and they won 33% of them. Charging them with cheating might make those of us who grew tired of seeing them in the Super Bowl feel better, but somewhere deep in our heart (in an area no one will ever be able to see) we know it doesn’t explain that level of success sufficiently.

Hockey fans gave me one explanation about a decade ago. Hockey fans, not hockey insiders or analysts, but fans suggested that they thought their team had a better chance of winning in the coming year based on some of the hierarchical changes their team made in the offseason. I always knew, in the back of my mind, how important everyone from the general manager down to the scouts was, but I didn’t consider how institutional they were to the long-term success of my team.

A professional team in sports might have a few winning seasons here and there if they’re lucky enough to draft some key players and surround them with enough talent. They might even win a championship or two if the ball bounces the right way. If they don’t have the organizational structure of talented people throughout the hierarchy, they’re not going to win long term. As Jeff Benedict’s The Dynasty points out owners, general managers, talent scouts, and everyone in-between build a dynasty. The owner, in the case of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, was a businessman who had an obvious eye for talent. He also knew that after he found and hired that talent, his job was to back away and give them enough room to succeed. Some professional sports’ owners display too much micro level management (Jerry Jones), and some are too macro (Arthur Blank). As The Dynasty points out, Coach Bill Belichick made unpopular and jaw-dropping moves throughout the dynasty years, and Kraft didn’t approve of many of them, but he allowed his hire as coach/general manager to make whatever decisions he needed to make to sustain success. Those moves, more often than not, panned out over the long term.

One thing The Dynasty does not cover (because it’s probably of no interest to anyone but the football junkie) is the plethora of talent that Belichick and co., managed to find in the late rounds of the NFL Draft and in the various groups of undrafted free agents (UDFAs) that the Patriots hired. Were they lucky? Luck is involved of course, as even the best NFL scouts have a poor batting average, but the sheer number of successful moves the Patriots made in this regard that eventually paid off is an astounding comment on their long-term success. A number of my Patriot hating friends would love to claim that the Patriots might have been the luckiest team in NFL history in this regard. For twenty years though? I heard that Tom Brady once looked around the huddle of his teammates on offense and said, “How many of us are late round picks and Undrafted Free Agents (UDFAs)?” Look at the Patriots’ rosters throughout those 20 years. How many of their players on their roster were late round picks and UDFAs? Now, take that number and compare it to the rest of the NFL? The Patriots used multiple sources, both inside and outside the organization to inform their moves, but how many of those in-house advisers went off to other teams? How many of them were able to maintain that level of success picking players for other teams? Is it all about Belichick’s final say, or were Belichick and his coaches able to take those players to another level? How many of those same players went onto other teams to achieve the same level of success? How many coaches, from Belichick’s tree, went onto success with other teams?

If Belichick is such a genius, why didn’t he do it in Cleveland? What author Jeff Benedict points out in Dynasty is that Belichick couldn’t do what owner Robert Kraft did, Robert Kraft couldn’t do what Belichick did, and neither of them could do what Tom Brady did. The dynasty of the last two decades was a matter of stars aligning perfectly. If Robert Kraft didn’t buy the team, Tom Brady probably would’ve left the team after a few years, as he and Belichick didn’t see eye to eye on some matters and Kraft did everything he could to keep them together as long as possible. If Belichick remained a Browns or Jets coach, Robert Kraft’s Patriots might have won a Super Bowl or two, but six? If Brady went to another team, the Patriots might have won a Super Bowl or two, but six? Tom Brady might have won a Super Bowl on his own, but six of them? As The Dynasty points out, the Patriot dynasty was all about the stars aligning from the top down and a number of people played a role, but most of those people came and went, and the three most important players stayed for almost twenty years.     

“Bunch of cheaters is what they are,” just about every Patriots hater says anytime the subject of Patriots’ long-term, sustained success over twenty years comes up. “Right on!” is what I’d love to say before giving that feller a mean, emotional high-five. I’d love to say that the reason the Patriots always beat my team is because they cheated in big ways and small ones, but it just seems too easy.

The Patriots were accused of filming the signals of the opposing teams’ defensive coordinators. An important note here is that the general practice of filming opposing coaches wasn’t illegal, but they couldn’t do it from their sidelines.  

Another element of what we called Spygate is that the Patriots filmed the Rams’ walkthrough practice before 2002 in Super Bowl XXXVI. If you call filming a team’s walk-through practice, before a game cheating, then the Patriots allegedly cheated, but this opposing team’s walk-through practice occurred on the field, in pre-game warmups. That practice was available for everyone to see, and if the other team suspected the Patriots of being cheaters, why did they reveal secrets about their game plan on the field for all to see? They should suspect the Patriots of cheating. They should suspect every team of cheating and adjust accordingly. If this practice provided the Patriot’s enough information to win a game isn’t it on the opposing team to prevent the Patriots from learning their secret game plan. “It was against NFL rules for the Patriots to film that practice session.” True, but if this action led the Patriots to win even some of the games they did, then I have to wonder why my favorite team didn’t do it.

Another cheating scandal is Deflategate. Deflategate is quite simply a joke that Patriots’ that haters cling to to diminish the Patriots’ incomparable level of success. In both of these cases, the Patriots faced unprecedented scrutiny in the aftermath of the accusations, and in the case of Spygate, they went onto lose the Super Bowl thanks to a play some consider one of the best, most fluky plays in Super Bowl history. In the aftermath of Deflategate, they went onto win the Super Bowl.

The first thing Patriots’ haters and lovers, and all sports’ fans should admit is that we take some of these issues much too serious. Sports is a pastime. The literal definition implies that we are supposed to watch football to pass the time until the more serious things in life come along. The human being has been distracting themselves from the daily drama of their lives for centuries. Romans called it the bread and circus effect. As long as Romans were supplied food and entertainment to their people, the politicians could get away with whatever they want. How many Americans know every single detail of these controversies, versus those who know similar minutiae about local, state and federal politics? With that level of apathy, how far are is America away from the fiddling politicians of Rome that some suggest led to the fall of that civilization? When I witness two grown men argue over politics to the point that they almost come to blows, I can’t help but think of The Simpsons’ kids saying, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” on a car trip.

Bill Walsh

When it comes to professional football, we consider former 49ers coach Bill Walsh a genius among geniuses. Some place him up on the Mount Rushmore of the greatest NFL coaches of all time. Bill Walsh had a long and storied career coaching in the NFL and college, and he earned many of the accolades he achieved in his career. As another coach, Bill Parcells, once said, “You are who your record says you are.” Parcells also said, “Once you win a Super Bowl, no one can ever take that away from you.” No one can take Bill Walsh’s three Super Bowl rings away from him, and no one can deny that the man won 60.9% of his regular season games. He won 10 of his 14 postseason games along with six division titles, three NFC Championship titles, and three Super Bowls. He was NFL Coach of the Year in 1981 and 1984, and in 1993, and the NFL elected him to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Bill Walsh headed a team while coaching the 49ers that selected some great players. A number of those players played in a number of pro bowls, and a number of them ended up in the Hall of Fame. Other than selecting Hall of Fame talent, some experts credit Walsh with developing the West Coast Offense, but he even admitted he based his system it on a system developed by Don Coryell, called “Air Coryell”. Still, Walsh took the influence, matched it to his talent on the field and won three Super Bowls and an overall winning percentage of 60.9%. Did Walsh coach those players up to the point that they were better than they were? Their winning percentage in the regular season and the post season, in a highly competitive National Conference, says yes. Walsh’s coaching tree also suggests he was a great leader. Walsh, like all great coaches, benefitted from talent, great advisers and scouts, and a whole lot of luck. 

As for the talent he/they selected, no scout can guarantee that a college player’s talent will translate to the pro game. In that vein, we can say that selecting Joe Montana was something of a gamble. Yet, Joe Montana led Notre Dame’s 1977 team to a national championship. He was hardly a jewel in the rough. Another heralded move by Walsh was the trade for Steve Young. Steve Young’s talent didn’t appear to translate well in the NFL, as he had some poor years in Tampa Bay, and various NFL insiders deemed him a bust. With that in mind, we could say that Walsh’s trade involved something of a gamble, but Young finished his college career at BYU with the most passing yards in BYU history, he finished second in Heisman votes in his senior year at BYU, and he was selected number one in the USFL draft. He was hardly “a find” by Bill Walsh.

When it came time to select what some considered a true jewel in the rough, in the 2000 draft, to succeed the recently retired Steve Young, Walsh advised the 49ers to select Giovanni Carmazzi. Bill Walsh loved Carmazzi. He said he thought, “[Carmazzi] was a lot like Steve Young, only bigger.” Prior to the Carmazzi pick, Bill Walsh rejoined the 49ers front office and encouraged the 49ers to take Carmazzi with the 65th pick. Who, in the 49ers organization, would go against Bill Walsh? With the difficult transition from college to pro, it’s unfair to put a “miss” on any person’s resume, but imagine if Walsh “spotted” a starting quarterback from a power five conference who made numerous comebacks in his collegiate career versus a quarterback who some considered extremely raw from a Division I-AA school. Imagine what “spotting” Tom Brady would’ve done to Bill Walsh’s otherwise impressive resume.

To be fair to Walsh, many judged Brady almost comically lacking in athletic ability. He was the prototypical definition of a drop back, stay in the pocket quarterback and many believed the game was “now” so fast and the quality of offensive lineman was dropping so precipitously that every NFL now needed a quarterback with Steve Young’s athleticism. Walsh’s thought process probably accounted for that on both players when he encouraged the 49ers to select Giovanni Carmazzi with the 65th pick. (Giovanni Carmazzi never played a down in a regular season game.) Not that it matters, but the Brady family were 49ers’ season ticket holders for 24 years prior to the 2000 draft, and Tom Brady was a die-hard Montana, then Young fan, and the Bradys were hurt when the 49ers did not select the local boy from San Mateo. Brady was, at the very least, a hometown kid gone good in the California area. We have to imagine that his athletic accomplishments at Michigan put Tom Brady’s name in the 49ers draft room, and we can only guess that Walsh tired of the “Tom Brady conversation”.

Imagine if this genius among geniuses saw something most people missed in Brady, and his recommendations involved the 49ers going from Montana, as the starting quarterback, to Young, and then to Brady. Imagine if Brady accomplished half of what he did in New England for the 49ers organization. Those of us who loathed the 49ers in the 80’s and 90’s wouldn’t be able to tolerate the “genius among geniuses” discussions. This article wouldn’t be possible, because there would be no denying that Walsh was an unqualified genius. Had the Patriots not selected Brady, we can only guess that Brady loved the 49ers organization so much that he may have accepted just about any undrafted free agent contract offer from the 49ers.