You all know that the Colorado Avalanche are my favorite sports team. A lot of you also know that I have a second favorite team: the New England Patriots. I know that few of you share in that love of the Pats - heck, I’m guessing there’s more than a small minority that was really, really happy to see them lose last night. Regardless of your affiliation, though, you know what I’m going through.
Every sports fan is going to endure disappointment at some point. No team in any sport is going to win every year. The New York Yankees are the most successful franchise in North America, and they’ve won just 26 titles in the last 100 years or so. Most teams don’t even come close to winning it all every four years or so, and many teams haven’t ever tasted championship victory like the Giants are enjoying today.
Obviously, I was bitterly disappointed to see the Patriots lose. I wasn’t as surprised as some were - I picked the Giants to go the Super Bowl after that Week 17 game - but that doesn’t really deaden the pain much. My favorite football team was just a few big plays away from football immortality. Instead, they’ll be looked on as one of the biggest disappointments in NFL history. It was hard to watch and even harder to comprehend. My wife kept muttering that maybe if we rewound the Tivo and played it again, we’d see the “right” outcome and I knew exactly what she meant. Did our team really just lose like that?
But here’s the great thing about sports. As hard as that loss was to swallow, it’s necessary. Quite simply, the bitter taste of losing is what makes winning taste so sweet. At some point - perhaps even next year - the Patriots will win it all again. And when (if?) they do, it’ll be bad memories such as this one that make the win all that more enjoyable. You have to endure the bad times in order for you to appreciate the good times.
When the Avalanche lost to Dallas in 2000 (damn those Ray Bourque shots off the posts), I was crushed. The following year, the Cup run, was one of the most stressful stretches of my life. In the end, it worked out okay; Ray got to raise the Cup and it was all the more satisfying due to the heartbreaking failure of the previous season. Since then, it’s been mostly disappointment for Avalanche fans. We’ve got the Statue of Liberty series against Detroit, complete with a blowout game to end our season. There was the shocking loss to the Wild (thanks, Andrew Brunette), the sweep at the hands of the San Jose Sharks and, of course, last season’s heroic regular season run that came up just a little too short. All have been difficult to endure, some more than others. In the end, though, that’s going to make the next Cup win, when and if it happens, all the more satisfying.
I’m with you 100% on this one. As a fellow Avs/Pats fan, I’m still not sure if I really saw that ending last night. I must have been dreaming… they really lost like that? I felt the same way about the Dallas series too. At least we got to watch Ray-baby for a whole, absolutely incredible season the following year. The Pats were two minutes away from immortality, and it will be hard to repeat that. The Avs would have to go 16-0 in the playoffs to accomplish something similar.
i do feel badly for you, but I confess I’m one of the guys that was happy to see the Pats lose. The Boston sportswriters and (most of) the fans the past few years have been almost intolerable. I’m so tired of the bias New York and Boston teams get on ESPN, and recently the Boston worship between the Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics has been infuriating. Bill Simmons especially drives me crazy with his basking, like the city deserves this or something.
It’s all the more galling with the Patriots, with Belichek’s “fuck you” attitude and Brady’s smirk front and center on every fuggin sportcenter.
Anyways, I do feel bad for the true, non bandwagon Boston fans though. Immortality…just out of reach. The 2000 Avs are a good comparison.
I’m not a Sox fan, if that helps
A rational, well-thought out analysis from a Pats fans, that doesn’t blame the loss on luck? I didn’t think it was possible.
And Yes I was happy to see the Pats lose. I don’t like Belicheck, and the “Boston-centric” media has been especially unbearable lately.
But I do feel bad for you. I think you’re right though, losing like your team did last night, or the Avs did in ‘00, as crushing as it is, is still better than sustained mediocrity, and it makes winning all the better when it happens.
I knew Tom Brady in college and I absolutely LOVE Darth Hoody, but I am not a Pats fan. Last night’s game sucked ass, and I walked away from it in more of a nasty mood than I have gotten from an Avs game in a long time.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Hoody leaving the field with a second left. The fact that they got everyone off the field and lined up so that Penishead Jr (I only call him and Peyton that because their heads are shaped like penii) could kneel down one last time was just fucking ridiculous. The game was over, and Hoody shaking hands with the Giants’ asshole head coach was a concession.
Fuck you, NFL, for robbing the Giants of the actual moment of celebration by having them get everyone off the field and go through that pointless motion. Fuck you, NFL, for making Hoody look like a villain when he did absolutely nothing wrong.
The Giants won the game fair and square. There was no luck involved, they wanted the game more and executed better. They deserved the win they got.
An interesting side note, on Friday’s Hannity and Colmes, Sean Hannity predicted the Giants would win by three. That’s an impressive prediction.
I have no additional problems with him leaving the field early. He’s clearly a poor sport and that was an indication of that, but he went and shook Coughlin’s hand already so who cares. I thought the bigger dick move was challenging the 12 men on the field. That’s pretty classless in my opinion.
I don’t find Hannity’s prediction all that impressive. If he’s been right 3 years in a row I would be impressed. A lot of people made Super Bowl predictions, someone was bound to be right.
Tough, tough loss. I was going to send you some congratulations if they won but after the loss I figured you needed some grieving time.
I warned the girlfriend that the Pats were not even close to a sure winner in this game but I guess Tom Brady’s big brown eyes are too much to resist as she laid some cash on them and got burned.
But damn, Brady looked almost human last night, didn’t he?
I’m a Pats fan, and yesterday sucked ass. They went 18 and fucking 0, were amazing to watch and proved to everyone that they didn’t need spygate to win. and they lose because of Eli” I don’t want to play in San Diego” Manning. I hate that guys face. Which means, I also do not like John Elway. The Giants played better though,and Eli was great. They deserved the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t change the fact that New England is a better football team, and anyone who thinks the opposite is blind.
I am another of those that were happy to see the Pats fall on their faces and be humbled. I too am tired of the media bias, Tom Brady’s taunts, the whole superiority complex of the Patriots, and many other factors. I agree that the whole clearing of the field and making the Giants kneel down on the ball was asinine, but Belicheck should have stayed on the field and taken it like a man with his team. Unfortunately Pats fans are going to have to get used to losing for a while. The Pats defensive core is getting old and many of those guys will probably start retiring (if not this year than next).
I dislike the Giants as well (being a Cowboy fan), but they did what very few teams did the whole season, they got pressure on Brady. It was a great 4th period capped off by a better last two minutes. Having Shockey out was a benefit in my opinion. He is a cancer with his bad attitude and it seemed the moment he went down, the Giants season got better. The aura around the team was much more positive. Still it seems crazy that we had back to back Manning’s winning the Superbowl and it wasn’t the same guy.
Being a Cowboys fan I feared the Giants in the playoffs. #1-They were starting to play great football and #2-It’s hard to beat any team 3 times. I was not at all surprised to see them beat the Patriots. The Giants kept getting better while the Patriots seemed to lose a step every game.
As far as “media bias” goes, please everyone remember that it’s not arbitrary. It’s more like “money bias” in that a whole crapton of sports consumers live in the New York/Boston megalopolis, and those combined markets make up a huge percentage of the money ESPN (and every other sports outlet) brings in. Not to mention that ESPN is based in CT and it’s pretty easy to figure out why Boston and NYC dominate their programming.
If there were 45 million people in Indianapolis or Cleveland, it would be Colts and Browns all the time.
That said, I couldn’t care less about any of those teams. I’m a Cubbies fan and don’t care about football or basketball.