Ive been reading this board all season (amazing board by the way, probably one of the most active I've ever seen)
Im not a Pats fan, Im a Minnesota fan, and I just dont understand some of the behaviour around here.
I constantly read posts by Pats fans who seem to honestly believe that the NFL and the game officials are actually out to get them! These people aren't kidding, theyre sincere, and its a fairly common view.
I mean honestly? Every team gets bad calls against them and every team gets bad calls in their favour. Its human nature to only remember the bad ones that go against you, just like in poker where you only remember all the times you got beat by some random fluke but never remember when a miracle card falls in your favour.
How is it that any fan in any city, especially one whose team is UNDEFEATED can actually be so ignorant as to think the league and its officials hold a vendetta against them?
I consistantly see how much you guys love to call fans in other cities "whiners". "The Colts are the biggest whiners", "The Steelers are the biggest whiners", etc, yes so many of you sit here and complain about how bad the NFL treats you, how biased the refs are, etc.
Can someone please explain to me how any serious sports fan with a drop of a clue can actually think their team is being targeted by league officials and refs? Id love to understand.
Do you actually believe the refs are out to get you? Do you actually believe the Commissioner is against you? Do you actually believe that GM from the Colts has the power to mold the league to his liking so his team could beat you? Do you actually believe that the NFL intentionally lets other teams off on things and nails the patriots just for kicks?
You guys are on pace for a perfect season and you STILL complain and make conspiracy theories. SHould that not make YOU the biggest whiners? I cant even imagine what this place would sound like if the Pats lost a game.
(oh and dont use "bullcrap Offensive PI on Moss". Its been happening his WHOLE career. Minnesota fans remember it well. The fact of the matter is, he should know by now whats going to happen if he puts his hands on a dback. Its bull**** yes, but its not new)
(oh and sorry to the Pats fans around here who actually write with their brains, I dont mean to group you in with the crazies)
I can see where you're coming from, honestly. Every time that I've seen a fanbase start *****ing about calls, I've rolled my eyes. I really, honestly, do believe that there is a
possibility that it's happening here though. While acknowledging that there's no real known precedent for it, I'm also stating that there isn't any real precedent for what's happened this year either.
I've always believed that, for any commissioner, the potential fallout of attempts at fixing would far outweigh any benefits that you could gain, so that's why it didn't happen. What about this year, though? Thanks in large part to Goodell's reaction to Spygate, the bulk of the football fans in the country have branded the Patriots cheaters, even though they're far from it. At the same time, Goodell, in doling out the punishment, proved that he's extraordinarily image-conscious, even to a fault.
The end result? Goodell doesn't want the Patriots to go undefeated or win the Super Bowl, and justifiably so. Would he attempt to have games fixed to ensure that this didn't happen? Probably not, I'll admit. If there wasn't on-the-field evidence to suggest that something ludicrous is up, then it all would have stopped with a couple conspiracy theorist nutjobs.
Then the Colts game happened. The Patriots are an extremely disciplined team (they won the Ravens game, for example, purely on discipline), yet on that day they just so happened to get penalized for ~150 yards, setting a franchise record. To understand how astounding that is, you have to realize how badly MOST of the Patriots teams of the past have sucked. For THIS team to set that record when they just so happened to be playing the Colts (Good vs. Evil, says Easterbrook), in a late game that was shown across the country, in a battle of the unbeatens.... it just lines up a little too well. It's still probably nothing, but you have to be able to see where a bit of doubt creeps in.
Goodell set himself up terribly by hanging the Pats out to dry, and only made it worse by destroying the tapes so that they wouldn't get leaked to Fox through his wife again (thus setting up claims that they had to destroy the tapes because they were so damning). He unfairly branded the Patriots as cheaters, in the season where they'll likely go 19-0. The irony of that would be a bit of a black mark on the league; though, as a Pats fan, I don't care. Goodell made his bed, he can lie in it. It's not quite as crazy as normal, though, to read a little more into it.
Also, journalist hacks haven't helped at all. From Wilbon openly condoning cheap shots on Brady to endless ******s calling for asterisks on Super Bowls that were won when the method of taping used was still legal, all the way to misquoting Belichick to say that a couple of AFC East foes weren't good enough to make his team, the mindless, semi-educated, wannabe-athlete masses have been piling on all year, and Pats fans are tired of it and pissed off. Think of the fallout from the whole cruise situation from a couple of years back with the Vikes, and how it got beaten into the ground. This was like that times 50 (I followed the Vikings closely at the time, since I'm friends with members of Culpepper's family), and it stemmed from something just about as trivial (leave any assumptions aside and look at what the videos really did and what they were really used for. It's a damn joke).
Anyways, I hope that that helps you make a little more sense of why the people here are the way they are. Some certainly take it way overboard, but this is pretty much the perfect storm for fix theories. If a commissioner was ever going to want to see a team lose, it would be now, and the Colts game was just a little too glaring for some people.