Question About NE Pats Fanbase

[LeavingMA]

Well this was the final four, so I'd assume people would be interested.

[bluecountry]

I didn't really get an answer on what I was really interested in finding out.

1) Just how big are the Patriots, NFL, and football engrained in the culture of NE and Boston sports?
-Is this a sport which is huge not only now, but always has and will remain that way even if they suffer through medicore, subpar times given they have a stadium and solid owner OR is there a lot of fairweather support that will dive down once the parades end?

2) Is football and the NFL a legitimately big sport in Boston and NE?
-Is this something which is followed religously on Sunday's?
-What about with the youth, is football a major sport played in pee wee's and very competitvely at high school?
-Does this region produce a lot of good football players or is Boston and NE a step behind football production compared to NY or PA, if not behind baseball and hockey?

3) Are the Patriots for real or is this like the Bruins and Celtics who while good are huge but once they stop winning they'll shrink dramitcally?

Thanks.

[LeavingMA]

1) The patriots are pretty big and the #2 team in New England behind the red sox. I don't think they will overtake the red sox anytime soon as being #1.
With the new stadium, a winning team, and solid ownership they will still do alright even when they start to do bad. Granted you always lose fans when things are not going well, but it will be easier to get season tickets then.

2) I really think football is more popular the further outside of the Boston metro area. It seems people care more for the red sox and talk about spring training even during the winter when the patriots are playing.
People in general certaintly follow the patriots, just not to the extent of the red sox.
Youth football from what i know if fairly possible and there are some good high school teams. It isn't anything like in the south though, that football is in another league. The New Englad region produces some decent football players, but i would still say the further south you go the better the players are or the more recognition they get.

3) Who knows, i'd like to say the patriots are real, but in the early 90's they were awful and hardly anybody went to the games. They could in the future end up like the Bruins and Celtics. And with the NFL being all about parody, it is a good possibility that sooner or later the patriots will have some tough years.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by bluecountry

When I was in New England I noticed that too, for some reason in Boston there are many more Red Sox to Pats stuff, but outside the city, especially outside the metro area, even north into NH and ME you see more Pats.
Why and why would a stadium in Boston have been terrible to build?

Maybe one reason the Patsies get more of a following outside the metro area is that outside the suburbs you get into some more genuine small towns, where it's still a big deal to follow the local high school team, and this may help generate more of a basic interest in football.

Complicated issue as to why they don't have a stadium in the city of Boston. If you look back at the beginning, when the old original stadium was built in Foxboro in the early '70's, that was the era when it was all the rage to build the concrete doughnut all-purpose stadiums. Why the Sox elected to stay in Fenway when so many other baseball clubs were abandoning their intimate, traditional, old-style parks, well, who knows? Maybe something to do with the way Boston loves its old traditions. Whatever the reason, without the Sox on board, you didn't have two professional clubs and a city all pooling their resources for a new stadium, so the Patsies kind of had to go wherever it was cheap to build. This was exacerbated by the fact that their owners at that time were pretty stingy with the bucks.

Another thing: It's nearly impossible to get any new big project constructed right in the city of Boston. Boston has a bunch of insular old neigh-buh-hoods, where they don't want anything or anyone moving in and intruding on their close-knit communities, so they're going to fiercely resist having any of their local landmarks razed so a bunch of outsiders can build something like a new stadium. Also, Boston's government is cumbersome, and laden with patronage. You don't get anything done in that city without a whirlygig of deals and payoffs and more deals. Look at the current Garden, which opened in the mid '90's. It was at least as far back as the early '70's that I first heard talk about building a new Garden. And all they had to do there was build something new on the same location, not move in on land already being used for other purposes. It's also a matter of Boston's being an old city, very densely populated, without a lot of open space right in the city, where they could build without displacing longtime residents. Might be the same reason the NY area built its football stadium and newest indoor arena out in Jersey.

[ogre]

Originally Posted by bluecountry

I didn't really get an answer on what I was really interested in finding out.

1) Just how big are the Patriots, NFL, and football engrained in the culture of NE and Boston sports?
-Is this a sport which is huge not only now, but always has and will remain that way even if they suffer through medicore, subpar times given they have a stadium and solid owner OR is there a lot of fairweather support that will dive down once the parades end?

2) Is football and the NFL a legitimately big sport in Boston and NE?
-Is this something which is followed religously on Sunday's?
-What about with the youth, is football a major sport played in pee wee's and very competitvely at high school?
-Does this region produce a lot of good football players or is Boston and NE a step behind football production compared to NY or PA, if not behind baseball and hockey?

3) Are the Patriots for real or is this like the Bruins and Celtics who while good are huge but once they stop winning they'll shrink dramitcally?

Thanks.

Generally, Boston is pretty passionate about sports. All the sports--the major ones at least; not sure about soccer--have their hardcore fans who are there no matter how the team is doing. This seems to be especially true of hockey, more than football or basketball, but it's true of all three to a degree. Seems that the Sox are the only team with a widespread following that's engrained in the local culture the way football is in the rust-belt states, TX, NE, etc. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they have been around longer than the other teams, and Boston really loves its old traditions. There's also something about that '67 season. Why exactly the '67 Sox cast such a spell over this region, who can say? I read a book once, called Lost Summer (I forget the author; think it may have been a Globe sportswriter), that dealt with that very question. The theme of this book was that the country was going through a very traumatic time in the late '60's--Vietnam, race riots, assasination, general disintegration of traditional culture--and that the season-long odyssey of this little underdog team fighting its way to the pennant became people's escape from the hard realities of the times. Whatever the reason, it's clear that people who experienced that season felt something absolutely magical. They fell in love with the Sox and somehow that started a passion that has been passed to new generations and has just grown and grown.

It also doesn't hurt that since the magic of '67, the Sox have never gone more than a year or two at a time--and not very often at that--without a winning season. Which brings me to the question of whether enthusiasm for the Patsies is real. I'd say only time will tell. The last few years make the first time in their history the Patisies have been great. The question of how lasting the enthusiasm really is will probably be answered only when they hit their next dry spell.

As for the question of just how big the NFL is here, well, in a way, all the major sports are "big" here. All are followed with interest. Certainly there are Pop Warner leagues and the like. There still seems to be an enthusiastic local following of high school teams in the non-suburban small towns where there's still a sense of close-knit old community. Those opportunities are there if you have kids who would like to participate. But if you're asking whether even at the pee wee level football gets a passionate following, whether anyone but parents will show up at the pee wee games, whether football is part of the fabric of life in the region, well, I'd say not really. This ain't Texas.