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Tom Brady of the New England Patriots celebreates with the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Photo: AFP
Opinion
Tim Noonan
Tim Noonan

How the youth of New England became the most entitled offspring since the Roman Empire

Humility and perspective may be in short supply after the Patriots’ miraculous come from behind Super Bowl victory over the Atlanta Falcons

I will try to keep this as brief as possible because rumour has it that millennials possess seriously truncated attention spans.

You’re all so damn busy going viral, but all I want is three or four minutes of your time, in particular from the Chowder Head descendant, those millennials of Boston and New England whose sole living memories are entirely rooted in this century.

Congratulations, you hit pay dirt. Your sense of entitlement is now historically on par with the most exalted Roman Emperors.

In your brief lifetime, you have invested your sporting passion in nothing but unbridled glory. Since 2000, you have enjoyed 10 major sporting championships with the New England Patriots winning five Super Bowls, the Boston Red Sox three World Series, the Boston Bruins a Stanley Cup and the Boston Celtics an NBA title.

Duck boats carrying the New England Patriots make their way down Boylston Street during their victory parade through the streets of Boston. Photo: EPA

In the last 14 years of the 20th century, those teams combined to win zero championships, so your full of yourselves, and it’s even more understandable considering you have Chowder Head geezers in Hollywood, like Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, spreading your cultural lore to the world.

But a bit of free advice here: exhale. Remember that hubris took down the Roman Empire and it could just as easily take down the Chowder Head Empire as well.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick redefining the parameters of team-first excellence

Show a little empathy for your fellow man because the last thing the world needed was another championship in New England, particularly one that was pure larceny.

Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, the sun and the moon gods behind the most prolific run of success in our modern sporting era, were born to crush souls and break hearts.

New England Patriots running back James White scores the game-winning touchdown in overtime of Super Bowl LI. Photo: EPA

They are completely ruthless and, in the case of Brady, charmingly so. When the New England Patriots rose from the ashes to come back from a 25 point deficit with little more than 20 minutes remaining in Super Bowl LI to defeat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28, no one should have been shocked.

And the fact that six months shy of his 40th birthday, Brady has never been better has become remarkably uneventful as well because it is glowingly clear that at some point both he and Belichick were co-signatories on a deal with the devil.

San Francisco 49ers’ unyielding activist quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits to take a stand

There is absolutely no doubt, New England, and please understand that the bill will always come due on any deal with the devil. It may not be your generations debt, but it could well be your kids.

Imagine for a moment how the good folks in Atlanta, Georgia feel. New England has enjoyed 36 championships in the four major US sports over the last 113 years while Atlanta has one.

Confetti falls after the New England Patriots defeated the Atlanta Falcons at NRG Stadium in Houston. Photo: AFP

Never mind the youth, Atlanta sporting misery has no generational bias. I mean, did you really need to steal from a neighbour in need, New England?

This title would have meant everything to the state of Georgia, parts of which have still not recovered from the Civil War drubbing some 150 years ago.

Colin Kaepernick’s NFL activism inevitably spilling over to other sports and forcing hard questions and answers

Really, there is little difference between winning four instead of five Super Bowls in this young century, particularly when you have been to seven of them.

This last victory is just pure greed, avarice of a biblical proportion the type of which historically dooms even the greatest of empires. You know they had their gods in the Roman empire as well, most of them imported from Greece much like Brady was appropriated from California and Belichick from Maryland.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Photo: AP

OK, Zeus may have been a homeboy, Patriots owner Robert Kraft who has been the enabler of the gods, but the great deities of the Chowder Head Empire were not.

One thing that is largely indigenous to your region though is its unrivaled contribution to American literature.

In trying to keep up with the times, traditional Olympic Games now a thing of the past

A number of notable regional wordsmiths, from John Updike and Robert Frost to John Cheever and Steven King, have written of the beautiful misery of being a long suffering Boston Red Sox fan.

Misery and suffering, of course, are the grit behind great art. You think Russia’s Fyodor Dostoyevsky could have written a profoundly miserable work of art like Crime and Punishment if he had spent all day taking selfies with a smug grin on his face and wearing a Tom Brady jersey? Not a chance.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (left) presents New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady with the MVP trophy. Photo: EPA

So spare the universe more hackneyed tales of Brady’s redemption from the cruel and unjust punishment handed down by the NFL’s villainous Commissioner Roger Goodell over tampering with inflated footballs. You really aren’t that hard done by.

Again, this is free advice and easily dismissed New England, but take a moment to appreciate those who have much less.

Who knows, maybe the Chowder Head Empire might even be able to prolong that devilish debt and have a more glorious run than the supposedly eternal Roman Empire.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: most entitled of offspring
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