Growing up outside Boston, Massachusetts, throughout the 1970s and '80s, being a fanatical supporter of the local teams was not really a choice, it was more like a duty.

Most of the Boston sides were rooted deeply in the traditions of their respective sports and becoming attached to them was unavoidable.

Baseball's Boston Red Sox, basketball's Celtics, and ice hockey's Bruins always seemed to be at or near the top of their leagues and all had their share of proud history and legendary players.

Then, of course, there was the ugly sister of the New England pro teams, the Patriots.





The Pats seemed to make up for the other New England teams' abundance of rich history with a conspicuous lack of their own. Name the best players in the Red Sox, Celtic or Bruin history and you will find some of the greatest names in American sport - Ted Williams, Larry Bird, or Bobby Orr, for example. But who comes to mind when thinking of the Patriots' greatest player? John Hannah, an offensive lineman, the most anonymous member of a football team. The saddest part is that there is not even a close second to Hannah. Inevitably, any Patriot player bound for greatness left the team and made his mark elsewhere. There are no Joe Montanas or Walter Paytons with their jerseys hanging in New England. Just Hannah and guys like Jim Lee Hunt and Gino Capelleti - not exactly immortals. Addictive Complementing the team's dearth of individual stars was the performance of the team as a whole. From 1960-85, the first 25 years of the Patriots' existence, the franchise won a grand total of one post-season game. Strange as it seems, those factors combined to make rooting for the Patriots even more addictive. I knew that the end of this misery would come somehow, and when it did, it would be sweet. It finally happened during the magical season of 1985, when the Pats made an incredible Cinderella play-off run to reach Super Bowl XX. As a high school student in Massachusetts at the time, I was on cloud nine for the entire two weeks preceding the big game. I should never have allowed myself to entertain thoughts of a championship. These were the Pats, after all, and something bad was bound to happen. And happen it did. New England were humiliated in the Super Bowl, beaten 46-10 by the great Chicago Bears in a game that was even more lopsided than the score indicates.



