Hating Perfection

It turns out Nietzche was right. That dead syphilitic mustachioed god-is-dead German white male, as seemingly wacky as any Western philosopher, was on to something, at least as regards the Patriots. Nietzche believed that in the battle between the strong and the weak, the weak had won, and they had created bonds (morality and religion) which constrained the strong, because of both their jealousy and self-interest.
I’ve seen some hated teams in my short life: Duke, the Yankees, the Florida basketball team. I’ve hated some of those teams myself. But the intensity of hatred for those three teams is well below the hatred of the Patriots. And to me it makes little to no sense, unless people really and truly do dislike success.
For example, one of the oft-cited reasons for disliking the Patriots is the manufactured “Spygate” scandal (Can we declare the end of attaching –gate to the end of every scandal, incidentally? Even if it is as serious as critics allege, it doesn’t compare to tampering with the machinery of democracy.). The whole scandal centered around some assistant coach or scout or some intern filming the signals of the Jets during their opening-game ritual massacre. It was against NFL rules; the Pats were fined their first-round pick and six figures.
It’s indisputable that this was against NFL rules. But it’s a leap to go from being against the rules to the Pats are a dirty, tainted team who deserves the derision and scorn of all decent human beings. Rules are rules, but not all rules are commandments. I don’t think badly of jaywalkers or speeders. Within the NFL, I could care less about people who leave their socks a quarter-inch too high.
Now, no one thinks that the socks issue deals directly with the integrity of the game, and so it is a different issue than “Spygate.” Nevertheless, however, the mere existence of the rule does not guarantee its moral force. Simply put, does this rule in fact promote the general welfare of the game?
The answer, really, is no. It’s legal to put an advance scout up in the stands to watch the signals of the opposing teams. Writers and scouts admit this freely. If you could field an army of scouts with photographic memory to memorize the opponent’s signals, that’d be legal too. So the only real difference between the illegal, immoral act and the perfectly OK act of scouting is a piece of technology. The underlying act is the same; the only difference is what you’re doing it with. So stealing signals, the alleged corruption about the whole affair, is perfectly legal and even approved.
The reaction to Spygate reeked of intellectual inconsistency. People have hated for less but I doubt that that explains the depth of their hate. For example, what seems like a much more logical issue to seize on, Rodney Harrison’s HGH suspension, has been ignored.
Another reason I’ve heard about why people hate the Patriots so much is because of how hyped they are, and how overrated they are (with special vituperation reserved for Tom Brady). This, too, is unjustified because if there’s anything that deserves the undivided attention of sports fans’ eyeballs, it is unmatched feats, which the Patriots are two games away from achieving.
A third reason for hating the Patriots has to do with their violation of the unwritten rules of the game in running up the score on hapless teams. Of course there’s no formal rule against mauling an opponent beyond necessary, but there has been a strong code of honor about flaunting the heights of your superiority over one’s opponents. It’s a perceived issue of cruelty: of going out of one’s way to impose humiliation on an opponent. The Patriots did not need to score more, and in fact it could have been counterproductive to do so: they could have lost a significant player to injury.
What’s interesting about these issues, though, is the deeper image that people see of the Patriots. Basically, the Patriots’ achievements have been ill-gotten: either they took it improperly, or their image has been dutifully burnished by an adoring media. Success outside of the approved channels is tainted.
What this proves is that Nietzche was correct in this instance. But clearly not all. I don’t know of anyone who hates Tiger Woods, for example. Michael Jordan was easily the most popular athlete of his generation and perhaps ever. Roger Federer inspires awe among those who know of him. What separates the Patriots from those other athletes? And, if these different athletes receive a different amount of esteem, how should we feel about success as sports fans?
Everyone loves March Madness because the underdog has a strong chance of winning. A fan who embraces a winning team too quickly and too promiscuously is branded as a “bandwagon” fan. Even though there are many popular successful athletes, there’s still a perception that winning has to be done in a certain way.
Let’s start with the two rules and see if we can figure out the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woods. Both of these rules have to do with tribal identity. The latter rule’s connection is easy to see: someone who switches between teams too quickly is too mercenary, without bonds or ties. The former rule is a bit harder to see, but I think it has something to do with the chances of success for your tribe. By rooting for an underdog, you’re affirming the possibility that hey, it can happen to you too!
What Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Federer all share is that they don’t really have any tribal identities. First, two of the three play individual sports unaffiliated with a specific region of the country which exempts them from regional prejudice (Ohio State, meet the University of Michigan). Second, their heritage cuts across boundaries: Woods is, as he reminded us, Cablinasian; Jordan is a post-racial African-American in public image; Federer is from a small country renowned for peace, cuckoo clocks and chocolate. Last, the media loved them all which makes it harder for critical stories to be incorporated into their image (for example, Michael Jordan was often a mean SOB, as anyone who read Playing for Keeps can’t really escape, especially with the incident where he ended some kid’s career in training camp). All are inoffensive, leaving us free to appreciate them for their art.
What they have, the Patriots lack. They have a very specific regional identity: Boston and New England, a region famed for producing sanctimonious assholes (see: The Puritans, and also the contemporary Masshole). Add to that the success that every other Boston-area sports team is having (except for the Bruins, but no one cares about hockey), and people from other places just have to be wondering: when do we get a chance to wake up with a victory hangover? Which is, recall, part of the fun of March Madness. And, of course, the media is not particularly fond of them, because Bill Belichick dislikes the media making it hard for the media to write dumb stories about how little Jimmy Belichick (assuming there is a Jimmy Belichick) slipped and skinned his knee, among other dumb stories the media could possibly be writing. Plus that, with the scandal, the media got a chance to moralize. Human beings love to be feel and express their superiority over their fellow man, and media members are human beings with a megaphone.
The Patriots’ success is exclusive, not inclusive. People outside New England just can’t relate, in general.
Well, if that’s why they’re hated, the next issue is whether we should be hating and resenting them for their success. We could hate them if their success was truly ill-gotten, and there is a not insignificant part that is: running up the score is distasteful. But that’s it, from my vantage point, at least. Their success is earned.
But can we justifiably hate earned success in sports?
One of the great aspects of sports, that distinguishes it from wrestling and theater and movies is that it is unscripted and that no one knows how it will end. That makes sport a human drama with verisimilitude, because of course no one knows how our own will end up (or won’t tell at the very least). We want to be astonished what our fellow human beings can do, what mountains they can scale.
This is the theory at least, but several million will hate the Patriots if they break through the barriers that stopped almost everyone else and go 19-0. That would be astonishing. Because, between the winning of the Patriots and the winning of the other two Boston sports teams, the game is beginning to look a little rigged to many people. There’s a tension that I don’t think can be resolved, because the scaling of the mountain makes it seem less formidable and impressive. The achievement seems better in theory than in fact. And if scaling the mountain is something that’s done routinely, then it’s no achievement at all.
As for me, I like to watch mountains being scaled and this Everest hasn’t been climbed yet, so I’m fine with the possibility of the Patriots planting their flag at the top.