It’s okay if you don’t like Philly, because Philly probably doesn’t like you.

That doesn’t mean we can’t be on the same side for a day, though.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the majority of the country will stand united behind the Philadelphia Eagles; many of you will do so grudgingly, having chosen what you see as the lesser of two evils. Sometimes you need to form troubling alliances in defense of the greater good.

And have no doubt that the Eagles, who last won a championship in 1960 (and have never won a Super Bowl), are the greater good here. They are underdogs, their roster is stocked with likable and socially conscious players, and they’re coached by an affable man who looks like Tank McNamara.

But there’s more! Their quarterback, Nick Foles, has shocked every football fan in the country and resurrected his career (watch him getting choked up about making his daughter proud and tell me you can still root against him). Chris Long has donated his entire salary to schools in Charlottesville and other cities. Malcolm Jenkins is one of the leading athlete activists fighting for reform of the prison system. The team’s group celebrations have provided some of the most memorable and joyful moments of the NFL season.

It helps, of course, that they are up against the most loathsome organization in professional sports.

The New England Patriots are the only franchise that is regularly and credibly accused of systemic cheating. They are coached by a man who treats most conventions of simple humanity with contempt. Their star tight end, Rob Gronkowski, is a sentient LMFAO song who can’t make it through an interview without giggling at the mention of the number 69. When he dreams, all he sees are commercials for new shows on Spike TV.

Even before Tom Brady partnered with an obvious snake oil salesman, he’d become the Tom Cruise of the NFL. He’s a great player, infuriatingly so, but over the past five years, he has become reclusive, standoffish, and undeniably weird. He also spent most of last season with a red MAGA hat conspicuously on display in his locker, but was too cowardly to speak about the hat or its implications.

Bill Belichick, who is rightly hailed as one of the great coaches in sports history, wrote a letter of support for Candidate Trump, using bizarre syntax and vocabulary so similar to Trump’s own that many people initially thought it was a fake.

This isn’t all about Trump, though he has infected every aspect of our culture. If he manages to stay awake until kickoff, he will be rooting for the Patriots, whose owner donated $1 million to the inaugural celebration. In the morning, he will be waiting to hear from Steve Doocy that his friends in New England have won again. He will ask one of his assistants to smile for him, and then he will mash his fingers into his phone until it produces a tweet about how the Eagles deserved to lose because they don’t adequately respect our troops.

The Patriots have won more than anyone, and they’ve done it for nearly two decades. They’ve experienced every possible permutation of winning, and done so with a joylessness and an arrogance that makes them impossible to like. To root for them in this game is to root for the 1 percent. We’re living in an era of nearly unprecedented inequality, and choosing to support the Patriots in this environment is like being one of those people who spends all day on Twitter defending the honor of their favorite CEO.