| | | The Brady/Trump connection makes me MAGA! for Brady Sunday.
Some Patriots Fans Are Getting Sick and Tired of All the Winning
Pigskin loyalty and Trump aversion pull liberal New Englanders in opposite directions.
By
GEOFFREY NORMAN
Updated Feb. 3, 2017 6:39 p.m. ET
Dorset, Vt.
The team is called the New England Patriots, so it is understandable that people here in Vermont tend to be fans. And many of them are surprisingly serious fans. You can see the Patriots logo attached to cars, occasionally sharing space with a “Bernie” sticker.
An alliance between professional football and purebred socialism might seem a bit anomalous, but that is only the beginning. It gets better.
Patriots fans, including those in Vermont, believe their team is one of destiny. Their coach, Bill Belichick, is the greatest of all time, and his dour public personality would do Cotton Mather proud. Plus, Tom Brady is the best quarterback ever, not to mention the most handsome. He also has—it just goes on—an astonishingly beautiful celebrity wife.
The team had the best record in football during the regular season. In the playoffs, they dominated: first a team from Texas (not that one) and then the Pittsburgh Steelers. Now they’re headed to the Super Bowl—a familiar feeling. Beat the upstart Atlanta Falcons, and that’s five Super Bowl rings for Mr. Brady. No other quarterback has more than four.
A victory would also bring Mr. Brady a kind of sweet vengeance and rehabilitation. He had started this season in exile, suspended and forbidden not only to play for the team but to associate with it in any way. Disgraced for conspiring to let a little air out of some footballs. He denied the allegation but a shadow still fell over the season.
After missing the first four games, he returned with more than the usual amount of fire in his belly. Mr. Brady and millions of fans can already imagine the scene: With Poine, goddess of vengeance, perched on his shoulder, the quarterback accepts the Super Bowl trophy from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the man who suspended him.
You’d think this was shaping up to be an incredible year for Patriots fans. But there is a problem. It comes down, like so much of this nation’s discontent, to politics. The problem is Donald Trump.
A fierce rejection of Mr. Trump and his politics has poisoned the sporting and cultural air in New England. There is the boycott of L.L. Bean, the iconic Maine company known for its signature hunting boots. The company’s problems don’t stem from its implicit endorsement of hunting. Rather, a member of its corporate board made large contribution to the Trump campaign.
In Vermont, home to Bernie Sanders, Mr. Trump won 30.3% of the popular vote. In Massachusetts, where the Patriots play, the president did a little better, getting 32.8%. But that small group almost certainly includes the votes of Messrs. Brady and Belichick, as well as team owner Robert Kraft.
In 2015 reporters spotted a “Make America Great Again” hat in Mr. Brady’s locker. He later acknowledged, “We’ve played golf together many, many times and I’ve always had a good time with him. He’s been a friend of mine.” As for Mr. Belichick, he was photographed with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago not long after winning the Massachusetts primary. And they were smiling! Mr. Kraft has described Mr. Trump as “a very close friend.” On the eve of the election, Mr. Trump announced that the coach and his star quarterback were supporting his bid for president.
All this was too much for some fans, like the one who told Fox Sports last year, “Brady, I don’t like him anymore now. With him voting for Donald Trump, he’s got to be out of his mind. I also care for Kraft and I don’t understand what Kraft’s doing.”
Fans in another time would no doubt say, “So what? Play the game.” Richard Nixon was a Redskins fan. Everybody in Washington hated Nixon but remained in love with the Skins.
But there are Patriot fans in Vermont who cannot shake the hurt and sense of near-betrayal. Troy Hermansky, an acquaintance of mine, grew up a New York Giants fan. But after living and working in Vermont for 30 years, he had become an admirer of the Patriots, and especially of Messrs. Brady and Belichick.
“You know, I am a fairly forgiving person, especially as a fan,” he told me. “I forgave Tiger Woods for cheating on his wife. I forgave Brady for Deflategate. I have forgiven all sorts of bad behavior by my favorite rock stars. But this . . . it honestly does change things for me. It has turned me into a Falcons fan this week.”
Say it ain’t so, Tom. And Bill. Say it ain’t so. |
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