Why, and when, did things get so damn nasty?

I mean really who cares what these fools think.

imagine being a Jets fan. IMAGINE BEING A JETS FAN. close your eyes and do that for a minute. Buttfumble. Mark Sanchez. Woody Johnson. Rex Ryan. Thanksgiving massacre. Buttfumble.

NO WONDER THEYRE SALTY.

I've been watching my team embarrass opponents, win division titles, and rack up super bowl rings year in and year out for a third of my life. The price for that? 18-1, two league witch hunts, and a bunch of cornballs thinking that calling Brady a "cheater" will change anything about what he did on the field.

Embrace it. Make them all mad. Every stereotype that people have about Pats fans, double down on it because it won't always be like this and the come down is going to suck.

DefenseRules said:

I miss the old days.

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Q: What do you mean, "old days"?

Grizzafted said:

Buttfumble. Mark Sanchez. Woody Johnson. Rex Ryan. Thanksgiving massacre. Buttfumble.

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haha I like the double-reference to the buttfumble.

MuscleCarLover said:

I don't buy the internet angle.
.

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I think it has a lot to do with it, to be honest @MuscleCarLover . While I really dont want to get into a generational comparison angle (baby boomer, X v. Y, Y v. Z etc) I think social media, chat sites, etc give people an anonymous medium to flex their bombastic side. We see it on this board all the time. I'm guilty of it sometimes as well. Thankfully the mods are responsive enough to keep things under control.

Tunescribe said:

I've been watching the NFL more than 50 years, been a Patriots season ticket holder the last 22 years. I recall a time when there was no such thing as "haters," when rival teams beat the hell out of each other but after the final gun mutual respect and good-natured sportsmanship prevailed. The higher ideals of athletic competition were something we aspired to, valued and learned from in hopes of becoming people of stronger character. It was "fun" that we took seriously as a way of measuring ourselves, physically, mentally and emotionally.

I remember as a young fan feeling bad when my team lost but also admiring the skill of the victor and genuinely congratulating rival fans. We all had our favorite teams but at the end of the day were united in love for the sport. These days it's all so cutthroat that win or lose, you have to guard against someone else trying to tear you down, get in your face, or otherwise cause harm. It's not just at the pro level but all levels of sport.

I stated in another thread that the mental stress "deflategate" (and similar contentious nonsense) brings to a hobby/diversion I've relied upon all these years to escape stress ruins whatever joy is left. I'm not sure it's worth hearing and reading "Cheaters!" "Liars!" at every turn, especially when I know it's not true. You need a thick skin and most of it I can tune out, but real life and death is grim enough without putting football on the same level.

I wonder if R. Stokoe Goodell had any compunction over the sadness and anger he has caused so many thousands of fans with his outrageously punitive approach to legislating what should be a source of enjoyment. "Integrity of the game" never meant less than when processed through the hollow brain of that overstuffed sock puppet.

What a sad state of affairs.

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Maybe it's the same reason people don't stop at stop signs, yield where there's yield signs or cross-over 3 lanes to get off an exit.....AS IF IT'S OK!!

No one has any patience or common courtesy any more....it's "me, me , me.....and what about me?!!"

Even on this board, it seems people race to post the latest news as if it's an accomplishment (which it's not).

The more I see it, the less I like it.

TBR said:

Social media

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And truthfully, it really should be called anti-social media. Because that's the end result. Being social can only happen with 2 or more humans face-to-face.

Chiuba E. Obele said:

Q: What do you mean, "old days"?

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He means our old days....There used to BC and AC...now there's ASM...after social media.

I like the days before cell phones....I forgot mine yesterday on a customer call. No big deal to me. But some people panic and actually drive home to get theirs!

PatsWickedPissah said:

I was on the internet in the late 80s and thru the 90s on USENET interacting primarily with AFCE fans. Yeah the Jets were obnoxious, but hey they were New Yorkers and the Bills were brutal but NOTHING at all like it is today.

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Ah usenet! The 8th wonder of the world!

mgteich said:

Part of the change came when the NY-Boston hatred poured into our patriot fandom. Before Kraft came, we didn't hate the jets, who hadn't had a competitive team since Namath played. The jets were literally beneath contempt. They were a joke (and still are)..

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Don't underestimate the New York factor. The rivalries, Mangini-fueled jealousy, the fact that pretty much every network and major online outlet is based in New York (and whose media staff gleefully play into the bitterness of league people like Tomlinson, polian et al) and, of course, the heavily New York-biased makeup of the nfl office itself.

Ostensibly I'd say in February 1997, but then it escalated once Goodell became Omissioner and Mike Kensil joined him in February 2006.

The Rats front office personnel finally had the power to act on their jealousies and resentments and we got Spygate.

Since then has just been an escalation.

Chiuba E. Obele said:

Q: What do you mean, "old days"?

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I know this is difficult to believe, but before 1995 (a mere 20 years ago) there was no internet and there was no cell phones.

You read the paper, watched some sports news, watched the Patriots, talked about it in person with your friends or on the phone. That is it.

After that. You either watched TV/video game, went outside to do something, or read a book or magazine. Talking on the phone wasn't even what it is now.

Can you imagine we actually made it though a day?

It's not just sports - it's everything.

In the mid-90's, Robert Jordan (James Rigney) was the premier fantasy author in the world. His books dominated the genre. Around that time, George Martin's first ASOIF came out. It took a couple of years to catch on.

During that time, if you went to a Martin Message Board, it wasn't enough to love his work. You had to HATE Jordan to his very soul.

These people flooded Amazon with one-star reviews of Jordan's books immediately - overnight. it was orchestrated.

Over a fantasy series.

Blew my mind.

Bruins29 said:

I know this is difficult to believe, but before 1995 (a mere 20 years ago) there was no internet and there was no cell phones

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LivinLovin&Breathin_Brady said:

Blame it on national and social media. There was a time where the news reported their stories fair and objectively....

This biased one-sided journalism is why I can't stand watching the news. For an aspiring journalist like myself, it is truly disheartening.

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Consider the landscape:

- Social media - it's built for reaction, quick dissemination of "facts" or other information/invective... depending on the platform. On web 1.0-ish sites, like this (and other fan sites,) you can get into any depth you want, but it's walled off by team for the most part. Also even on said sites, "TLDR."

- The 24-hour news cycle and feeding the beast... but which beast? There is one, count 'em, one network for football news (exclusively.) There are a couple more for sports news, such as it is. NFLN is a company outlet, dominating coverage of the company. ESPN sucks as bad. The problem is, football coverage now has to be legal coverage, science coverage, etc. - which ex jocks in ill-fitting blazers aren't good at, and ex-jocks in sweats don't want to watch.

- The underlying problem with all journalism at this point? You win if you sell the ads. You sell the ads if you glue the eyes to the screen. You glue the eyes to the screen if people want your product, and what do people want to read/view? Conflict. Drama. Death. Disaster. Fear. Maybe sex. If it bleeds it leads, and if it scares, it airs.

In the past there were gatekeepers. Now the gates are gone, and if you don't compete with what some yahoo with a cell phone somewhere, you miss the brief, out-of-context random snark opportunity. BSPN is competing with NFLN but even moreso with random web content. Most potent products in traditional news? Fear or Conflict. And you have to use the most potent formula, because other genres have already sunk toward what people want, via the death of the gatekeepers there.

Where do we end up? There are 200 countries in the world, something like 5,000 ethnic groups, each with their own histories. On the History Channel we get occasional shows about Ancient Rome, a lot of Nazis, and -- now the majority -- shows about pawn shops, storage locker auctions, and people who work where it's very cold. If that's what people want to see, that's "History."

Sorry, core dump. Feh.

Boston is going to get particularly bad backlash because of the 9 world championships since 2001. We are just kicking ass and killing it. And lets face it, we are a boisterous, loud, intense, in your face region and that dosent sit will with the rest of the country.

Think about it. We have seen far more sports team success in the last 15 years than 99% of people see in a lifetime. We have been in the finals like 13 times over the last 15 years. Totally unprecedented and will never be duplicated.

Let the winners win and the whiners whine. I am sure that the people who whine the most are either the least successful or most insecure or empty.

PatsWickedPissah said:

I was on the internet in the late 80s and thru the 90s on USENET interacting primarily with AFCE fans. Yeah the Jets were obnoxious, but hey they were New Yorkers and the Bills were brutal but NOTHING at all like it is today.

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The demographics of people on USENET in the late 80s into the 90s was way way way way different than internet denizens now. (Disclaimer, I was on USENET in the late 80s into the 90s And in fact still am on USENET (believe it or not there are still a few decent newsgroups here and there.)

Many change$ over the year$. $port$ u$ed to be about the game. Drew different $ort$ of people. Commi$$ioner$ didn't get $40M.

Grizzafted said:

1 PSI doesn't bring you 12 division titles, 6 super bowl appearances, and 4 rings, and all these jerkoffs know it. It burns their ***es too much to admit the Patriots are the greatest dynasty in the history of football so they're going to latch onto deflategate and spygate to pretend that what happened in the NFL over the past two decades didn't happen and you know what: fu<k 'em. Kiss the rings and bow before greatness.

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No no that's explained by videotaping from a different place!

When't the Green Wedding?

if you were to pick a logical problem why the pats are disliked so much, I think the biggest thing has to do with the one thing that no parity efforts can solve......the coach.....BB is not only the most tenured, he has the highest winning percentage and it's not even close to the next guy

I think the general feeling is that while the tide rises and falls with all other teams, the pats spot in the playoffs is constant with no end appearing on the horizon......they'd love to get brady out of there, but they need to be careful what they ask for.......you have to believe that if garoppolo stepping in was close to seamless, that there would be some new attempt to sanction the pats in some way

if you go back to 2007, you're looking at a team who was as good as anyone in 2006 and would not have been a stretch to win the SB......the world knew they fixed the one chink in their armor (WR's) by loading up....and they added adalius thomas too to a team that had the best defense in the NFL the year before.......they were reloaded with many players in their prime......the pats had won 3 SB's and made the playoffs 5 times in the previous 6 years and they look better than ever.....so they found something to pinch them with

they go on their tear, fall just short in the SB, and then the next year brady goes down....the team misses the playoffs and the league assumed parity has returned......except that the tam gets bakc to the playoffs every year from 2009 to 2014 and get to the AFCC the last 4 years .... everyone knew they were going to crush the colts and get to another superbowl......time to throw another wrench in the spokes

this makes me think a couple of things.....the league can't stand dominance and that I think the league to do this to any team at almost any time.....look at what we are talking about here.....literally tenths of PSI's.....really? the magnitude of the supposed breaching of the specification is likely something that every team does almost every game

they want the pats to stop being so good and to stop hogging so much of the postseason.....the league is hurting so bad in certain regions....the southeast? in an area from southern florida to eastern texas to eastern missouri to washington DC, there was one team with a winning record (houston) and one playoff team (carolina)....9 of 12 teams in the playoffs were northern teams....there's only enough franchise QB's for about 10 teams, and the league has made it a pass happy game......

honestly, outside of foxboro, the league is in a ton of flux

fact is, there was better parity before the salary cap