In the hierarchy of NFL fandom, New England's followers rule the schoolyard. Cincinnati fans are still wetting their pants and asking the teacher to tie their shoes.
For Patriots fans, a defeat on Sunday – any Sunday – is rarely even contemplated. A Super Bowl victory, the third in four years, is expected by fans and predicted by "pundits." The team gets big happy faces on its report card each week as it topples one NFL record after another. The owner, the organization, the coach, the quarterback are all the standards by which the other kids are measured.
Bengals fans, meanwhile, get to follow a rising young team led by a red-hot quarterback. But even their own parents refuse to post their smudgy finger-paintings on the fridge.
But before getting too cocky, Patriots fans should take a moment to reflect on their on plight just a few years ago. As recently as 2001, New England's followers shared the same playpen of pigskin futility inhabited by the baby-faced wannabes of NFL fandom like those in Cincinnati.
In fact, the Bam-Bam Rubbles of the football fan sandbox, the Cold, Hard Football Facts, smashed his Tonka truck when he discovered that these two franchises have far more in common than New England fans these days will want to admit.
Both fans get bullied because of their embarrassing nicknames. Bungles? Patsies? When a schoolyard thug from Pittsburgh tosses out a "Bungles," Cincinnati followers are quickly silenced. For 40 years, a well-timed "Patsies" shut up Patriots fans, too.
Both teams suffered the indignity of being the new kid. The Patsies were one of the original AFL franchises in 1960, but were the last of the initial eight teams to obtain entrance to the upstart league. Even at this second-rate football school, the Patsies were almost refused entrance by the cool kids. In 1968, the Bungles became the AFL's second and last expansion franchise, as former Cleveland Browns head coach Paul Brown attempted to replicate his winning ways in another part of Ohio.
Both teams treated the playoffs like a fat girl with cooties. In the Patsies' first 40 years of existence, they made just 10 playoff appearances and claimed but six playoff victories. The Bungles have made seven playoff appearances in their 36-year history and can boast just five playoff victories.
Both teams got beat up twice with the whole school watching. The Bungles and Patsies each made two Super Bowl appearances over those respective periods. The Patriots were humiliated 46-10 by Chicago and lost 35-21 to Green Bay. At least the Bungles got in a couple good swings while twice battling the toughest kid in school, the 49ers, before losing 26-20 and 20-16.
Both got picked last for the kickball team every year. The Bungles have recorded an embarrassing 13 seasons of four wins or fewer since their founding in 1968. The Patsies recorded 10 seasons of four or fewer wins. But those 10 seasons included four campaigns of two wins or fewer – a depth to which the Bungles have descended just once in their history.
Yes, Patriots fans these days can stand atop the jungle-gym and beat their chests as the coolest kids in school. But the Cold, Hard Football Facts, like a blindside dodgeball off the skull, should serve as a reminder that it wasn't that long ago that Patriots fans were stuck on the bottom rung with droopy draws, a bloody nose and a black eye.
