Dave Betancourt | Sports Section Manager

2/08/02

Anyone who has known me for even the shortest amount of time knows that I am the worlds biggest Washington Redskins fan.  I bleed the burgundy and gold.  If the Skins don't win, I'm bummin'.  I can¹t even watch sportscenter if the Skins lose, and I watch sportscenter about 8 million times a day.  But everyone knows how much I love the Skins so I'm not going to get into that.

However, what a lot of people don't know is that underneath all the hoopla inside of me about the Skins lies a fan ofŠŠnow get ready for thisŠ..the New England Patriots.  What you say?  I don't believe it, you say?  Bull#$%t you say?  Well believe it people, because yours truly has been pulling for the Pats since 1986.

You see everybody has to have other teams to pull for other than the home team.  For example, of course I root for MJ and the Wizards but I'm also a big Knicks and Lakers fan.  Is it being a fair weather fan?  Not really.  If any of the other teams I enjoy watching are playing a Washington team, you can rest assured I'm rooting for the D.C. team.  It is common nature for big time sports nuts like myself to root for other teams other than the home team.  But let's get back to why I like the Pats.

The date, January 25, 1986.  It's Super Bowl time and the Chicago Bears are playing the New England Patriots.  Everything is going fine and we're all watching the game in the house.  At 5 years old I'm not a serious sports fan yet, but I do know what the Super Bowl is.  My father however is 21 years old and knows plenty about the Super Bowl.  What he knows best is that he doesn't want to be bothered.  All is going fine, the Bowl ends up being a huge bore as the Bears, lead by their great defense, punky quarterback Jim McMahon and the late great legendary running back Walter Payton, win easily. It's pretty much a blow out but then the big event happens.  My mom starts going into labor.  Oh yeah, forgot to tell you she was 9 months pregnant at the time.

Yep, Super Bowl Sunday and my mom is trying to have a baby.  Talk about timing right?  Well, lucky for my mom the game was a blowout otherwise my dad would have started debating if it was just cramps and then my mom would have had to kill him.  So anyway, the next day my sister Ashley Maria is born.  A few years later I thought back to that day and remembered how crazy it was my sister being born right near the Super Bowl and I figured, hey, why not start following one of the teams that was in that Super Bowl.

Well, my choices were the Bears and the Patriots.  The Bears were the obvious choice since they won the game, but for some reason I just didn't like them.  For some reason I still don't like them.  I think a lot of it has to do with Jim McMahon.  He always wore shades, even in interviews and when I finally saw his eyes I realized why.  Man, talk about cooky, I think there was some medical reason as to why his eyes were so creepy, but I still don't know. So because Jim McMahon kind of scared me a little, I picked the Patriots.

  Boy talk about a wrong choice.

After reaching the Super Bowl in 85 the Pats started heading in a downward spiral.  As the years went by they got worse and worse. Whenever they were on national television, which was rare, they always got their butts kicked.  In games where they made it close, they always managed to find a way to lose.  And if years of being one of the worst teams in the league wasn't enough, the Pats had without a doubt the ugliest uniforms in all of football.  I'm not talking about the nice snazzy silver helmets with the cool looking Patriot guy and the dark navy blue jerseys.  I¹m talking about the white helmet with the cartoon guy bending over a football with the red jerseys and white pants.

  Years of loosing and ugly uniforms aside, I remained a fan.  I didn't make a big deal out of it, especially since the Skins were still my number one team.  But when the Patriots used the number one pick in the entire 1993 draft on quarterback Drew Bledsoe I got pretty hyped. Bledsoe came in and brought the Pats instant credibility.  He had a strong arm and was the closet thing to Dan Marino that the league had seen in years.  The Pats still struggled and Bledsoe had his ups and down, but for the first time in a while they were fun to watch.  And with new coach Bill "The Tuna" Parcells running things, the Pats were on the way to respectability.

The Patriots become a winning team, even making the Super Bowl in 1996 which they lost to the Packers.  Then came this season.  When Drew Bledsoe went out with an injury in week 2 I pretty much lost interest in the Patriots.  And when unknown Tom Brady came in I really lost interest. That and I wasn't the worlds biggest Bill Belichick fan.  But then all of a sudden the Pats are winning.

Then they keep winning.  And then they win some more.  And then there's the Raider game.  And then the Steelers upset.  Next thing you know their facing the Rams in the Super Bowl.  All of a sudden the Pats are Super Bowl champs and when I tell people their one of my teams they don't believe me because I hadn't talked about them in eons.  Even my Patriots mini helmet was collecting dust.

But after watching quite possibly the greatest Super Bowl ever the Pats fan inside of me came bursting out.  Yeah I know it still seems like I'm a fair weather fan, and no one hates fair weather fans more than me, but hey, I've put in the hard years.  All those years of ugly uniforms and one, two and three win seasons.  All of a sudden it's cool to be a Pats fan again.  And I'm right back on the bandwagon.  That is until the Skins get hot again.