SpyGate, DeflateGate, a 15-year shadow on the AFC East, Stetson cologne magazine spreads...Hell, I can even remember when the number 69 used to be cool.

Of all the justifiable reasons to choose a bag of d***s over a Patriots fan, it all came down to one thing: a guy named Eric. He was the douchiest of them all.

The year was 2003, and a zeitgeist-changing epiphany would befall my young consciousness: Patriots fans signify the largest per capita concentration of douchebaggery in the Northern Hemisphere. Eric was a combination of bravado and dry-humping inanimate objects, while having the football rhetoric of an 8 year-old who had their mac and cheese stolen from their lunch.

Not only did Eric drink my last beer without asking (on a regular basis), but he’d run his mouth while losing by 28 points in Madden. He’d “forget” to offer me a slice of 2 a.m. pizza, and then come to my room the next night and ask for a bag of popcorn. Go bury your face in some Tuck Rule snow, Masshole.

Who runs their mouth when they win and lose? People with diarrhea of the mouth, that’s who. People who are batting 11th in the baseball lineup, that’s who. People who shave, and then have a beard approximately 27 minutes later.

He’d pretend to ask me a legit question, like, “Hey, how’s AJ Feeley going to do this year?” And then as soon as I’d start a legit response, he’d start laughing hysterically, and tell me that the Dolphins have no quawatabahckahh. Oh yeah? Your accent is stupid, Eric.

I’ll put my cards on the table: Dolphins fans have endured one of the longest s***-talking eras in the history of the NFL. The Patriots have rewritten record books, while the Dolphins have had a clown car of different QB’s and coaches. Plus, the Internet. I’m sure my dad’s generation walked uphill both ways to school and defecated on every Patriots fan imaginable, but their Hershey-streaking of Patriot-ness didn’t have a fraction of the audience. Wrong place, wrong time for a Dolphins fan.

So let’s say you went swimming in the gorgeous Miami sun, laughing and playing your day away. You have a few drinks mid-afternoon, flirt a little bit, start looking forward to what’s to come. Text a few people, call a few people, get a little crew together for some festivities. You’re having a blast, you go to take a piss, and you come back and your friends Ubered back home and forgot about you.

Then, Eric slaps you on the ass and starts singing at the top of his lungs, “Hit the road, Jack. And don’t you come back, no mo, no mo, no mo, no mo....” Winks at you, and takes your beer off the table as he passes by, starts drinking it while that person you were flirting with earlier is now getting felt up by Eric on the dance floor.

Patience.

Breathe.

Patience.

The worst is over.

The sting of dad’s spanking is almost over. You know once you’re done writhing, you’ll be out on the playground again.

I have 4 children, and the 6 of us in the SUTTON family will be right here when Patriots fans fall down. If you’re like me, you might even have a quasi-reliable mental record of sorts of who said what, and to what level of douchebaggery the comment was attributed. Every rung of the ladder Patriots fans hit along the way will be a moment of karmic retribution that only our souls can measure.

JFK’s assassination, man landing on the moon, OJ Simpson’s car chase: there are moments that change us all, so powerful we remember where we were for the rest of time.

I know where I’ll be when the Patriots fall from grace: it’ll be the day I take the high road. And by take the high road, I mean fart in a container, and mail it to Eric.