The true joy of being a Patriots fan is in seeing lesser, impure strains of love punished, words backed by deed. To love the Patriots is to be, in some sense, a Stalinist. You will not be forgiven for the sin of thinking you can win against the Patriots; instead, you will be invited to a purge. And if you hate the Patriots, so much the better. The joyless win at the end of all this is the darkest kick there can possibly be in a sport which, at the end of the day, remains a war game. It is, all of it, probably indefensible.
Bill Belichick is a crazy person and a cheat, and eminently does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. His press conference blaming the mysterious forces of air pressure conjured the disaffected air of half-heartedly testifying as to why he shouldn't be executed. His disquisitions on stuffed animals are disturbing and should frighten children.
But let's not pretend he represents a deviation from some truer game, no matter how much the league and the rival coaches loathe him. The Patriots are the truest iteration of football, the good and the bad. As Belichick marshals his superior forces, as he sharpens the tools of skulduggery, he strips the game of its soft niceties and Roger Goodell's branded fiction, and also of the idea that this sport, out of which so many are harmed in so many ways, is anything but fundamentally violent. That's why people watch.
As a wise man said, unable to help admiring another dark style of play, long ago: "it was young, it was harsh and savage; it had no human respect, it felt its solitude; it improvised depth and form all at once." It's only right to hate the Patriots as vicious cheaters. But ask yourself—what sport are you watching? And what would you rather watch than this?
