As much of the human kind (at least those who follow NFL - a.k.a. the American Football) has come to learn, the New England Patriots became the first team (since the league went to the current 16 game format in 1978) to go undefeated during a regular season. Except for folks in the New England states and some other parts of the country (Michigan, Ohio and California included for obvious reasons), there aren’t too many who are happy with this. Not only did they not give much thought/hope for Patriots to pull it off, most of them did not want this perfection to be achieved either.

As much as people love competition and challenges, there seems to be an inexplicable hatred towards sports teams that do perform consistently well over a considerable length of time. What makes it so ironic is that the team being hated so much is called Patriots and their uniform reflects national colors - go figure! Although I have no personal experience, I have very strong reason to believe that Chicago Bulls (these poor guys repeated a 3-peat of NBA Championships), L A Lakers (these guys pulled off a 3-peat as well), New York Yankees (well, everybody knows - they won 26 MLB Championships including 4 in 5 seasons in recent years), … have all gone through a similar phase during their respective good/great days. In my personal opinion, these teams have done so well that the popular term, Dynasty, is an understatement.

Again, being just a sports fanatic, I have very little or no knowledge/experience of what goes on inside these pro-teams’ locker rooms, on and off the field. But from a personal experience of playing with a certain team (name of the team has been left out - if you can guess it, consider yourself smart!) in a recreational league (Michigan Tech Graduate Student Council’s Summer Softball League) for four consecutive seasons, I got the first-hand experience of this hatred myself (and as a team). Until recently (and even today), not many from opposing teams realized the amount of dedicated hard work that we put in to produce the fairy-tale like numbers almost every week. Just to give a hint, most of us sacrificed Friday evening parties/bar (beer) time so that we could get up in time for Saturday morning practice - this happened every week, through out Summer and every season. Everyone who showed up for practice, did so with whole-heartedness for about 3-4 hours every week - meticulously learning the game, its rules and regulations, all the while getting to know each other and building the team concept. Why does any one need to know rules and regulations in a recreational league? First off, it makes the game safe (for yourself and those who play with you); and second, it reduces conflicts/confusions during the game… If the afore-unmentioned team went 44-5-1 over 50 games in four years with back-to-back championships, there were plenty of reasons that rest of the league didn’t care to know about!

Following my discussions with several different people, I have come to understand one reason for hatred against perfection: people like other teams to have chance at winning championships. However, who prevents those teams from performing beyond expectations to lay claim to the championship? Like a HOF Coach once said, if one needs to be the best, then they need to beat the best. Indianapolis Colts and Boston Red Sox are a classic example of this statement - not many (at least outside of Colts/BoSox-nation) felt sorry when they repeatedly lost to Patriots/Yankees and failed to win the big one. As much as I personally dislike these two teams, I do have great admiration for the way they fought and eventually won the title, beating their arch-nemesis along the way…

All said and done, more these teams (that have already established themselves as a Dynasty or better) win, more hatred comes their way. If only I could understand/explain this hatred towards PERFECTION…