American Sports are a brutal, all-or-nothing proposition

[jmt57]

One part of this that makes no logical sense to me is how whatever team loses the Super Bowl gets held up for public humiliation by the entire public. For whatever reason it seems to apply more to the NFL than to other sports.

Although the anonymity of the internet might be pointed to as part of that phenomenon, I discount that rationale. I can recall the same thing happening to the Buffalo Bills, and before that to the Denver Broncos, and before that to the Minnesota Vikings. In the aftermath of Super Bowl 20 the Patriots and their fans were ridiculed; teams they beat on the path to the championship game were spared the same fate.

In my opinion the Patriots vastly over achieved to make it as far as they did following what was expected to be a rebuilding season in 2011. Fail to win that final game, and you 'choked' and you suddenly underachieved instead.

It's all just a very strange viewpoint when the second (and third and fourth) best teams are perceived in a negative light as losers, while 28 truly inferior teams are spared that perception that gets repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.