I am going to watch the Super Bowl today, and I am going to enjoy it.
My favorite NFL team, the New England Patriots, pulled off their customary playoffs rally, combining their unparalleled strategic acumen with the football equivalent of inflated program components scores. They are the most hated team in the NFL, and I live in a city where I dare not wear their colors in public. My sister-in-law, a New York Jets fan since infancy, will trash talk me and Tom Brady all evening as she digs into my homemade spinach dip.
I, and Brady, will deserve it, because the Patriots are a toxic organization. It’s not clear whether they actually cheat more than most teams, or whether they’re just too arrogant to cover up their espionage and loophole exploitation. Several key figures support political positions I despise, in their words and with their money. Following trades or retirement, former players have spoken about the physical and emotional brutality of Bill Belichick’s coaching. My brother has compared being a Patriots fan to rooting for the Death Star. If so, sign me up as a storm trooper.
I am a Pats fan for pure and sentimental reasons. In 2004, six months after I’d moved to eastern Connecticut for graduate school, the Patriots won their third Super Bowl in five years. My then-partner had to work that evening, so I watched the game alone while playing Diablo 2. For the first time, I felt at home in Connecticut, in solidarity with the New Englanders around me. When I moved back to Chicago five years ago, my allegiance to the Patriots became a link to the long stretch of my personal history spent in a state that provided me with numerous lifelong friendships, the majority of my adult survival skills, and two debt-free advanced degrees.
Despite the allegations of perfidy, the Patriots approach football as I most enjoy seeing it played. Theirs is a patient and intellectual game, built on analysis and exploitation of an opponent’s weaknesses. They often sit a few points behind for the entire first half of a game, only to surge in the fourth quarter, having worn down a rival’s stamina while mapping every vulnerability in the opposing defense. They’re strategically flexible: remember how narrowly they missed the playoffs in 2008 as Belichick gradually transformed Matt Cassel into a real quarterback? If they win today, it will be because they once again outsmart a team that erroneously believes they see the Patriots coming.
I’m not expecting my defense of the Patriots to change anyone else’s allegiances. Football team fandom is a very personal choice, rooted in emotion and nostalgia. (Nod of respect to the many die-hard Cleveland Browns aficionados in my family.) All I’m saying is, if you’re watching the game today, and you don’t have a dog in this fight, remember that the L.A. Rams are gross carpetbaggers who heaped St. Louis with empty and expensive promises before returning to a city that got along just fine with no local NFL team for years, and still doesn’t much care about them.
The alternative, of course, is to give up on the NFL completely. NFL teams coerce cities into investing unthinkable quantities of taxpayer money into stadiums and promotion. Traumatic brain injuries leave many players to struggle with mental illness for the rest of their lives. Racism persists in everything from team names to the persistent assignment of black and Pacific Islander players to certain positions regardless of aptitude.
The problem with walking away is, I love watching NFL football, and everything fun is upsetting if you go looking for trouble. Figure skating’s administrative organizations continue to shelter abusers and to sustain an environment that cultivates eating disorders and mental breakdowns, not to mention financial corruption – and to look like paragons of responsible athlete advocacy and business management compared to the folks running elite gymnastics. My friends who brag on social media that the Oscars are their Super Bowl are throwing parties in support of a awards ceremony with more nominations for Green Book than for If Beale Street Could Talk, one that is going host-less after justified outcry against Kevin Hart’s penchant for homophobic and transphobic jokes. It’s easy for me to skip the Oscars, which I’ve always found boring and unsatisfying – the only Best Picture nominee I’ve seen this year is Black Panther – but I’d feel bereft if I cut my favorite sports out of my life.
I don’t want to claim a moral high ground over my friends who do abandon former favorite creators, artistic works, or sports teams, out of justified anger toward their positions and behavior. But I’m a greater fan of what John Milton (himself a problematic favorite) referred to in Areopagitica as “books promiscuously read” – of understanding what we hate and reject by consuming ideas we disagree with and thinking critically about them.
In doing so, I become better equipped to talk about why the things that give me joy also make me angry. I’m not crazy about where my money is going when I buy a sandwich at Jimmy John’s, but they also provide a far more delicious and satisfying vegetarian option than most fast food chains, which I want to encourage them to keep on the menu. The Usual Suspects and Annie Hall remain two of my all-time favorite films, even though I can barely stand to look at their lead actors, and their underlying worldviews reflect the alleged reprehensible actions of their creators; they’ve taught me more about visual storytelling than any number of more morally worthy movies. I understand why my girlfriend can’t abide RuPaul, after his track record of offensive comments about transgender people, but I love how Drag Race has legitimized the careers of queer performers and how 1990’s drag culture gave me confidence to come out when I was a teenager. For all the evils of the New England Patriots, they’ve given us a stereotype-busting Jewish athlete in Julian Edelman and a “health at any size” hero in retired defensive genius Vince Wilfork. Rotten organizations and destructive people often contribute good to the world, and finding ways to acknowledge both is a delicate but necessary exercise.
So to all of you who claim to just be watching for the commercials and the halftime show, or who are more excited about the Puppy Bowl, or who are blowing the whole thing off to binge One Day at a Time before the third season drops, please note: we are all smug and problematic self-indulgers today. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some dip to make. Go Pats!