Don't Worry, The Patriots Still Have Haters

I'm in an especially good mood this afternoon, and why shouldn't I be? It's Hump Day, it's unseasonably warm and sunny outside, and, last time I checked, the New England Patriots are world champions. There's a whole lot to be happy about today.

And since I'm feeling so bright and cheery, I think I'm going to pay it forward and extend a little charity to those much, much less fortunate than me.

I imagine most of you missed it, and for good reason, but in a Deadspin article titled "No One is Happy for the Patriots," some lickspittle went on a diatribe for the ages about how despised, obnoxious, and insufferable New England Patriots fans are. He went on to just lay into us for how we behave, how we choose to enact our fandom, and pretty much everything else he could possibly think of. It's an angry, angry article, and by the end of reading it I was absolutely in tears with laughter.

Up until today, I didn't even know that Deadspin was still a thing. I could've sworn that that clickbait grabbing, content spewing cesspool of crappy writing and hot takes went bankrupt ages ago after Hulk Hogan leg-dropped them into oblivion. But apparently they're still scrambling to keep their heads above water, and good for them, I say. As I have said countless times before, in this highly competitive media landscape, you do whatever it is you have to do to get those pageviews and clicks, and that goes double from a site that had to go all Chapter 11 on everyone's ass. So rock on, Deadspin; based on the number of comments the article got, it looks like everything worked out swimmingly.

Now I don't know about any of you, but I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I read this piece. The amount of cap tipping and greatness acknowledging that has been taking place over these last few days had me a little worried that maybe the New England hate might have died down a bit as of late. But no. Fear not. It's still alive and well, and as long as there are people like...whoever it is that wrote it, I don't remember and won't be looking it up... are still struggling to stay relevant, we'll always have articles like this one to bask in.

Probably the most laughable part of it, to me, was the assumption that Pats fans actually give a single flying piece of rat crap about what anyone outside of New England thinks of them. Yes, we will always engage in debate, and yes, we will always defend our team when we feel our team needs defending...but that's just sports. That's what sports fans do. They talk trash and engage in arguments and get passionate about their teams. There's nothing weird about that. The Patriots are a dominant team and are always in the spotlight, so we find ourselves doing it more, I'll grant that for sure. I'll also grant, with no small measure of pride, that we're the must smug, arrogant, obnoxious bunch of jerks around. We wear that title like a badge, and I will fight anyone who tries to argue otherwise. But the assumption that we have this compulsive need to play the victim and make the world feel sorry for us is just beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. It's as beautiful as our quarterback and his backup. I'd offer a counterargument here - but honestly, I couldn't care less about any of it, and articles like this one are just making me enjoy my Super Bowl offseason that much more.

So here you go, Deadspin. Have a few pageviews on me. You need them way more than we do over here. Hope you enjoy them. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to being way too busy enjoying this latest win to remember that your lousy site even exists. Hope you land on your feet soon.