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The joy of six. Sorry Steeler Nation, but you now have company on the Stairway To Seven.

With Super Bowl LIII now in the books, all the confetti cleaned up from Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the NFL now in its official offseason, the team that haters love to hate, hate-love—and yet still watch—claimed it’s sixth Lombardi on Super Bowl Sunday.

The New England Patriots.

Yes. THAT team of spying, ball-deflating cheaters are champions once again.

If you’re from outside of the northeastern corner of this “great” country of ours, then you are S.O.L. because as long and The Hood and The Golden One are running things from their football galaxy that is far, far away in Foxboro with Emperor Palpatine, the Patriots are still here, and here to stay.

For a long time…Deal with it.

But my question is, why is it that all football fans HATE—and secretly hate-watch—the Evil Empire of football like some sort of secret underground cult right out of Fight Club?

Rival fans hate each other, hate the colors of said rival, hate even mentioning or acknowledging said team’s existence, but whenever their team plays the Patriots, its like a Boy Scout convention, right down to the kumbaya.

There is hate, there is Golden State Warriors/Steph Curry HATE, LBJ HATE, Duke Blue Devil HATE, New York Yankees HATE, and then there is New England Patriots-Tom Brady infinity-level-of-hell HATE.

For whatever rhyme or reason, just the simple sight of Tom Brady and his perfectly coiffed Anglo-Saxon W.A.S.P. J. Crew catalogue model-looking mug, that sends fans into a proverbial seizure-inducing, lathered-up pack of caged dogs. Like for real, before the Super Bowl, how many “Rams fans” suddenly came out of the woodwork before Super Bowl Sunday?

Right, let me know.

How many of these so-called “fans” were picking, talking trash, trolling and getting their petty on before kickoff, where are they now? You need an APB to find them. The Patriots could legitimately lay claim to be THE MOST HATED team in all of American sports history.

The Oakland Raiders, Boston Celtics, Dallas Cowboys, UNLV Running Rebels, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Ohio State Buckeyes and Alabama Crimson Tide all evoke a sense of fear, dread and hate—but grudging respect—from rivals, here comes the perfectly GQ-looking, cocky-ass Patriots and their six shiny Super Bowl rings saying, “hold my beer”

No other sports entity has a rap sheet quite like them: The Tuck Rule, Spygate, Deflategate, stealing signals, Aaron Hernandez and newly-minted Super Bowl LIII MVP, Julian Edelman after missed four games due to PED’s.

It’s so unfair it hurts. Oh well, beat them on the field.

Call them cheaters, put an asterisk* by their titles and hate Brady for his hot-as-hell Victoria’s Secret supermodel wife, Gisele and his perfect set of Uggs, but six championships in 18 years, in a era of free agency, expansion and global expansion is nothing short of amazing.

I personally stay out of G.O.A.T. debates such as LBJ vs. MJ. or Brady vs. Montana, but Brady has as many titles as Jordan and more Super Bowls than Montana—albeit in different eras and sports—both the level of Brady’s brilliance and Patriot dominance is Celtic-like dominant.

Gee, another Boston-area sports team smacking down a team from La-la land.

Where have sports fans seen this movie before. It may be a different sport, but I’m pretty confident that Red Auerbach lit a cigar in heaven as he smiled down on the Patriots white-knuckling the glitz-and-glamour high-powered Rams.

Beat L.A.! It’s been a Boston thing since 1959.

No other franchise operates with such a Fort Knox-level sense of paranoia in hiding injuries and being both evasive with the media and vague as New England. The Patriots are both the Death Star and B-2 Stealth bomber, who is both omnipresent and yet hidden from view.

One minute they are there, and they next minute they are quietly dropping a payload of daisy-cutters on a bombing run.

They are a walking red, white, blue and silver version of a Tom Clancy spy thriller novel full of both political and football intrigue on par with one of my all-time fave spy movie, Spy Game that featured Brad Pitt and Robert Redford. Aside from Eli Manning and the New York Giants, no one else has ever been able to solve the enigmatic riddle from Foxboro.

Being a Browns fan that lived in Steeler Country, I can attest personally the amount of sheer hate and animosity that Pittsburgh has for New England—hell, the whole Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—HATES the mere sight of the team from Foxboro to the near-psychotic levels out of Bird Box.

Thanks to ending Steeler seasons with ease since 2001, one risks near death wearing a No.12 jersey in southwestern PA, as well as southern PA near the Maryland border, where embers of the Ravens-Patriot wars still run hot and definitely not on South Street in Philadelphia, where Eagles fans await.

Steelers, Ravens and Eagle fans may not like each other, but the three fan bases all come together as some of the most vocal opponents of the Pats.

Refer to above in reference to the kumbaya remark, you’re welcome!

To New England, that is perfectly fine, they seem both tone-deaf and numb to the petty outside white noise that comes from vanquished enemies. While other teams seethe over the Patriots questionable and shady actions of the past, as they are all still up in arms over them, the Patriots are already planning for their next ring—and heaven forbid—a record-breaking seventh Lombardi to put up at One Patriot Place.

To paraphrase from Brady, the Patriots are still here, and aren’t leaving anytime soon.

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