With four Super Bowl appearances in the last five and 10 of the last 17, it’s understandable if you have New England Patriots fatigue at this point. In fact, you may be so sick of the Patriots right now that it’s turning you off from watching the Super Bowl on Sunday.
On the hand, the explosion of legalized sports gambling in the United States and expanded Super Bowl prop betting will make this game “interesting” for those who are sick of the Pats.
And if you are one of those sports fans who has grown weary of Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and company, well a Morning Consult poll shows that you are not alone.
Yes, the Patriots are the least popular sports dynasty of the modern era; survey shows. The Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls – which won six titles between 1991 and 1998 – were polled as the most popular dynasty.
It’s pretty astounding to think of the Chicago Bulls as being both a dynasty, and exceeding popular once upon a time, given what a phantasmagoric disaster of an organization they are these days.
In 2019, they have seemingly degenerated into a money making scheme, not a basketball franchise.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/1088211919616512001
In order to qualify as a dynasty, and thus be ranked on MC’s list, you had to be a team from the major four U.S. professional sports leagues (if you can count hockey in this group, and that’s certainly debatable) whom has won at least three titles over a six-season span; after 1980.
The Bulls were first with a net favorability of 31 points. The Pats were dead last of the 12 qualifiers with a -1 favorability, the only team on the list to be underwater. The top portion of the list was dominated by basketball franchises, as the NBA (including one Boston team) comprised six of the top seven.
The National Basketball Association more easily lends itself to creating dynasties because a.) there are only five guys on the floor at one time, so if you can put together three or four superstars in their prime at the same time you have a super team and b.) the playoff are so pointlessly elongated that the chances for an upset are very minimized.
Here are some of the poll’s findings in graphical format:
The survey was conducted Jan. 24-28 among a national sample of 2,201 adults 18 years and older.
So why are the New England Patriots so disliked among dynasties? Obviously, the answer goes well beyond the old cliche “familiarity breeds contempt.” Due to deflate gate and spy gate, the reputation that New England are rampant cheaters, whether it’s actually deserved or not, seems to have stuck.
Maybe football fans just don’t find Tom Brady relatable, given that seems to have a life you would only find in a movie script and a combination of personal and physical traits that only exist in fictional characters. Maybe sports fans are just turned off by coach Bill Belichick’s cold, stand-offish prickly public persona?
Perhaps it’s a combination of all of these things. Whatever the case may be, when their long, glorious, unparalleled run comes to an end, they won’t be missed by anyone outside of their own base.
And over time, you just don’t know what will become of a franchise. Look at what a train wreck of a dumpster fire of a pathetic joke the Chicago Bulls are today.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.