NFL fans love to hate a winner

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They have become the perfect villains, the team everyone loves to hate. Not around here, of course. Here we love the New England Patriots, and why not? Not only are they the hometown team, but we remember when the world was a very different place for the Patriots. Back when the Pats were a distant fourth on the New England sports scene, the franchise that played in the old stadium that had been built on the cheap alongside Route 1 in Foxboro, Mass., a stadium that had all the glamour of a tractor pull. Back when the Pats always seemed to be run on a wing and a prayer, Billy Sullivan's baby, even in those years when they were good. Because that was always the thing about the Pats, the thing we always knew, the fact that even when they were good the glamour was always somewhere else. In Dallas, for instance, America's team. In south Florida, where the Dolphins always had a certain mystique about them. In those places like Pittsburgh and Chicago and Green Bay, football places in ways this never was, never had been. We always knew that the real National Football League, the one that got put into myth, was somewhere else, not on Route 1 in Foxboro where the seats were like glorified high school bleachers, and there were too many traffic jams, and everything had the look and feel of third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous. So we love the Pats now because this is all some glorious payback, our day in the sun, complete with the best quarterback and the best coach and the best team and a stadium that's state of the art. Complete with the glamour. We love the Pats because they are proof positive that all your dreams can come true if you just hang in there and wait long enough. But everywhere else? No one else loves them. That much is clear. That's become obvious as this season has progressed, the antipathy towards the Patriots, who are now in the same category as the Yankees, Duke basketball, the Cowboys back when they were "America's team;" all teams that many sports fans love to hate -- teams that are perceived to be arrogant, whether they are or not. A recent ESPN poll had them as one of the most hated teams in sports. The recent ESPN The Magazine article on the best sports stories under a headline that says, "Perfect Villains." "Who says cheaters never prosper?" the article says. "Sometimes they seem unbeatable." And you can't listen to a national sports talk show without someone dumping all over the Patriots, seemingly the new parlor game. Tony Kornheiser and Don Shula were all but openly rooting for the Ravens on ESPN in the Pats' Monday night game in Baltimore a few weeks back. So why all the bad love? Some of it is not doubt jealousy. What's the old line? People like success, but they don't like successful people. That's the fallout from all the Patriots' success, the simple fact that there are people in the hinterlands who are just plain tired of the Patriots, the same way they would be tired of any team that had the success the Pats have had. Then there's the fallout from "Spygate." It's still the asterisk that hangs over this season, even though the Pats have certainly proved they didn't need any illegal enhancements to win games. The recent article in ESPN The Magazine is testimony to that. Then there's the Belichick Factor. We are long used to his style around here. We don't expect him to be warm and cuddly, a fount of sound bites. We don't expect him to be anything more than what he is, the best football coach of his generation, someone who you want standing on the sideline coaching your team. All the rest of it? Who really cares?But there's little question that his national image is of a football Grinch, the reason why the recent Sports Illustrated has him on the cover in a Santa Claus suit, with a rueful look on his face, portrait of the last guy you want to see coming down your chimney. The old sweatshirt as a fashion statement. The highly publicized feud with Jets coach Eric Mangini. The legacy of "Spygate." The portrait of arrogance Belichick can be at his worst, offering little. Is there any wonder there's a backlash against the Patriots? Is there any wonder there's a certain segment of people who want to see them lose? Is there any wonder why they've become the new NFL villain, what the Raiders once were, back when their motto was "just win, baby," back before they became such a non-entity no one cares any more? Is there any wonder why they've become the team everyone loves to hate? Not really. But in the end, that's all irrelevant. A nice little story line in the theater that's the NFL, a simplistic morality tale about the good guys and the bad guys. But nothing very important. Professional sports are about winning, nothing else. It's not about being well liked, not even about being respected. It's about results, the ones that are as cold and unrelenting as numbers on a ledger sheet. The kind of numbers the Patriots have put up this year. The kind of numbers that endure, long after all the particulars of a season are forgotten. Everything else? Everything else is the Miss Congeniality Contest.(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)