Tag Archives: Super Bowl

Four years ago I explained Why I Was Glad To See The Patriots Lose Super Bowl 42, tracing much of my NFL fandom up to that point along the way. The article was the culmination of my path from being a fan of a particular team to becoming a fan of the game. There’s a great deal packed into a pretty expansive article, but the gist of it is this:

While I was a Dallas Cowboys fan from childhood, my NFL fandom really began in middle school, when I started to play football myself. Like all twelve year olds at the time, I was awed by rags-to-riches Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf.” Accordingly, when the Patriots beat the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, it irked me.

It seemed obvious to any kid at the time that the Rams were one of the best teams to ever take the field. Between the notorious Tuck Rule snowbowl against Oakland, and the Rams not playing like themselves for most of the Super Bowl, New England seemed undeserving somehow. It felt like these flukes allowed a pack of unwitting beneficiaries to deny a historically great team their vindication, and it began my distaste for the Pats.

(more…)