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In the wake of the New England Patriots winning their second Super Bowl in three years (while also having three in the last five years, and appearing in four of the last five Super Bowls), a lot of people are enjoying their annual ritual of lamenting how much they hate Patriots fans. As someone with no dog in this race, who attended the Super Bowl for three straight years wearing Patriots gear but really not picking any sides, I find this kind of appalling. Are Patriots fans really that bad, or is any group of fans just kinda obnoxious after they win all the time? Is it possible that human beings have human emotions and just become…jealous of other fanbases for being successful? Is there a world in which Tom Brady is really just a shining beacon for what all of us should strive for but that many of us have no personal accountability to be great and instead choose to point fingers and blame others (like Tommy) for our problems? I’ll leave that to the reader to decide.
Anyone who knows me understands that I hate the city of Philadelphia with a passion. It’s no wonder that I am writing this blog (and inspired to do so) while on a train to Philadelphia for a work trip. That’s a blog for another day, and dates back to a Bruins/Flyers game I attended in college where I first realized that the fanbase in Philadelphia is truly other-worldly. Any city whose “food that they’re known for” is the shaved bits of a steak covered in cheese-whiz is not really my idea of a classy place. I’d opt for a Boston Crème Pie on my list of classier food options well before I’d reach to Philly for a cheese-whiz sandwich.
But if you picked “Boston Fans” or “Philly Fans” as the worst fans in the world, you are wrong and you are a loser. I would also posit that you were not granular enough. Because there is absolutely a big difference between a Boston Bruins fan from the North Shore and a Boston Red Sox fan from Brookline, just as there is a difference between a Flyers and Eagl- no, those are all the same. The correct answer is that Seattle Seahawks fans are the worst fans in the world and I am here to tell you why.
Reason #1: Arrogance
Patriots fans might have six super bowls to the 1 in recent memory, but you wouldn’t know it when talking to the average Seahawks fan. You may not know this because you might never have met one before. You would think that they won six straight the year they got one. Honestly in their minds I think they feel that Marshawn Lynch ran the ball into the endzone and then they ran the play again and Malcolm Butler doesn’t intercept it, counting for two extra Super Bowls.
Reason #2: Arrogance that comes from falsely thinking they are louder than other fans
Seahawks fans have dubbed themselves “the 12th man” because they are so proud of how great they are as fans, that they feel they give an advantage to the team when they are at home. You need to give Eagles fans credit here, because even though they will eat cheese whiz and vomit some of it on the faces of the fans in front of them, they don’t show up at the game pretending like they have any skill sets that are going to help the team on gameday. Now, I am not a scientist and I am just a guy with a computer, but it turns out that if you go to a search engine like Google.com and look this up, the Seahawks home stadium is actually built in a very specific way that makes it several orders of magnitude louder than other stadiums. Something about the way the soundwaves bounce off of something or other. I don’t know what any of it means but I will take science over a smug attitude any day of the week.
Reason #3: Any fanbase would be passionate about their team if they have no other teams to root for
Again, I am impartial in all of this, but when you remove the “annoying” factor and ask many people “which city has the most passionate sports fans?” they will often say “Boston.” I find this fascinating because Boston has four major sports teams and is not nearly as large as other major metros who support similar numbers of teams, like New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and others. Now we turn our attention to Seattle. They have a team in the NFL (the most popular league in America right now), and that’s about it. I made this argument to a friend a few weeks ago and she reminded me about the Seattle Mariners. I forgot the Seattle Mariners were even a team until she mentioned that. Have the Mariners been relevant since Ken Griffey, Jr.? Considering I forgot that they existed, I don’t think so. Naturally, if you live in the Seattle area and have nothing else to do with your free time, you root for the Seahawks.
My point is simple – take the Knicks, Rangers, and Yankees out of New York and Giants fans make Seahawks fans look pretty much like what Pete Carroll looks like: a wimp. It pains me as an impartial observer to say that about the New York fanbase but it’s true.
Reason #4: Seattle fans are so bad that they actually took teams away from them
So we’ve established that Seahawks fans are incredibly arrogant and by now you’re probably getting increasingly angry about this situation in light of the examples given above. Well, it gets worse. Seattle fans are so bad that they actually took the SuperSonics away from them. Think about that. A team that had future Hall-of-Famer Ray Allen on it – who eventually won a championship in Boston, not that it matters – was taken away from Seattle because they couldn’t support the team. And these are the same fans who brag about how great they are at Seahawks fans. Um, hello?!? I realize that the NHL is giving Seattle a hockey team, but take that with a grain of salt. The NHL already has over 30 teams and put a team in Vegas before they even thought about going to Seattle. Putting a team in Vegas was like the forbidden fruit of sports expansion until the NHL decided to do it. We are talking about a city whose NBA team was taken away at a time where the team in Portland was able to stick around. Pathetic.
So, next time you’re thinking about opening your mouth about how much you hate Tom Brady or the Patriots or Patriots fans or Boston fans, think twice. Does Tom Brady start the season 0-6 every year and then because of running around in the pocket and getting pass interference calls or weird Golden Tate touchdowns with replacement refs or random onside kicks end the season 10-6, make a run in the playoffs and lose every year while supporting an insufferable fan base that thinks its better than others? No. These are fans who actually just win all the time and act like it. Not the other way around. Deal with it.
Jeff Kirchick 