Patriots Derangement Syndrome
Deflategate has sent New England fans over the deep end.
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Ideally, one part of the braincommonly known as the understandinglimits the psychic distortions of sports viewing to a civilized minimum. If my Facebook feed is any indication, the balance between healthy fanaticism and clinical psychosison the part of some otherwise nice peoplehas been tipped in an alarming direction. This is thanks to deflategate: the case of the New England Patriots and the allegedly intentional deflation of footballs.
Over the years, Patriots fans have learned to treat every feature of reality as fluid in order to hold two variablesBill Belichick is the greatest coach who ever lived, and Tom Brady the greatest quarterbackabsolutely constant. With the release of the Wells Reportthe NFLs 243-page report laying out the case that footballs were tampered withthe condition has gone code red.
To Pats Nation, you hate us cause you aint us, or, in English, any criticism of the franchise is sour grapes; the Wells report has been debunked; Spygate was trumped-up nonsense; the fumble statistics indicating the franchise has been advantageously deflating for years are a mess; the Pats would have beaten the Colts anyway; and the team is the victim of a witch hunt. To get a fuller picture of how fandom can bend an otherwise normal psyche in the direction of wishful thinking, selective memory, and situational ethics, lets look at these claims one by one and in reverse order.
Source.