A funny thing happened on the way to this year's Super Bowl. Las Vegas installed the New England Patriots as betting favorites -- at 9 to 4 odds -- over the 11 other teams that qualified for the NFL playoffs.
That's right, all you closet Calvinists and hand-wringing Red Sox yahoos. Some New England entity other than a bowl of clam chowder or a Kennedy is actually favored to win something the rest of America cares about.
How in the name of Michael Dukakis did this happen? More important, can our delicate psyches handle it?
Vegas bookies are a notoriously unsentimental lot. They seldom set odds based on curses (take the Bambino's ghost and lay 12 to 7) or civic self-
esteem (New York may be the Big Apple to Boston's Second Banana, but the Jets and Giants both stunk this year). They may regard Pats quarterback Tom Brady as handsome and resourceful and Bill Belichick as smarter than the average NFL coach, or appreciate the fact that several key players from the Pats' 2002 winning Super Bowl team are still around. Yet, they are vastly more persuaded by things such as home-field advantage and a defense that could stop Rommel's tanks on first-and-goal from the 1-yard line. Bottom line: What oddsmakers care about is attracting deep piles of money to the wagering pool, on either side of any given contest. You like New England giving 6 points against Tennessee on Saturday? Wear your Brady jersey to the betting window if you wish, but please bring cash.
No, what's funny about the Patriots being Super Bowl favorites in 2004 is not the piles of money that might be invested as they march toward another potential championship. It's the piles of emotion, much of it cynically fatalistic, that New Englanders have long invested in themselves and their hometown franchises, sports or otherwise, as -- there's no delicate way to put this -- losers.
Seventh-game choking, leveraged-buyout hapless, Radio-Citified losers.
Junior varsity, Bucky Dent-ed, Way-Off-Broadway also-rans.
George Bush-whacked, Big Dig-buried, Sun Belt-ed underdogs.
Bowwow and boohoo.
Given that self-image, it's disorienting to be favored to win anything as huge as a Super Bowl. Surreal, even.
"It's funny how Patriots fans go from yelling for some respect to not knowing what to do with it once they get it," says Fred Kirsch, editor and publisher of Patriots Football Weekly and a man with his finger on the pulse of Pats Nation. "But that's the way we were brought up, I guess. We're always looking for the next shoe to drop."
David Charron, president of the New England Patriots Fan Club of Arizona, says 30 years of being a Boston sports fan is enough to make any sane person look over his shoulder and expect a goal-line fumble or blocked punt when the big game's on the line.
"Being a Sox fan, too, you always expect something to go wrong," says Charron, who grew up in Plainfield. "This isn't normal. Everyone I watch games with is afraid to leave, no matter what the score is."
According to Joe Korzeniewski, a bartender at Murphy's Grand Irish Pub in Alexandria, Va., where D.C.-area Pats fanatics gather to root for their favorite out-of-town team, an expression heard regularly around the bar on NFL Sundays is, "They never make it easy on us."
Unfortunately, says Korzeniewski, the fan who popularized the expression passed away recently. Maybe he was speaking more literally than anyone realized. Still, Korzeniewski reports, "The guys down here are mostly basking in" being Super Bowl front-runners "rather than worrying about it."
That's the nation's capital for you. Blind to potential misfortune. Undeterred by anything resembling reality.
It does seem like a long time, though, since New Englanders sat in the pole position at the start of a race like this. Was it when Larry Bird wore No. 33 for the Boston Celtics and captained the best team in basketball? When Cambridge homeys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won Academy Awards for co-writing "Good Will Hunting," catapulting them from obscurity to Hollywood's A-list? (And will Affleck have to give back his Oscar for releasing "Paycheck" and "Gigli" in the same year?)
Maybe it was when Aerosmith capped its post-substance-abuse comeback by winning its first Grammy, in 1991. Ten years and three Grammys later, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. These days Steven Tyler does milk commercials and "Lizzie McGuire" guest shots. It's practically America's Band.
A more instructive analogue to the 2003-04 Pats is Boston's winning bid to host the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The city competed mightily for the 2000 convention -- against Denver, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles -- and was a long-shot loser to LA in the finals. This time around, Boston fought off a last-ditch effort by New York City to take home the prize. The winning formula? Outstanding special-teams work and a staunch defense against the raiders from Manhattan.
"Boston is a city that has always answered the call," Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said at the time. The bells are ringing again for the Patriots, and New Englanders are listening.
Happily, but nervously.
This article appeared in the Boston Globe on January 6, 2004