Rematch

Well it's that time of year again. The Superbowl is only days away and this year not only do I have the pleasure to watch it at Penn State, but in fact the best team in football is playing: The New England Patriots! Yes, That's right I said the Pats.  Anyone who knows me can say that I love 3 things in this world: my girlfriend, my family, and of course the Pats! To see them in the Superbowl makes me happier than I can explain. However this years match up is even sweeter as it is against the NY Giants. For those of you who don't know football, or don't care this match-up is a repeat of the 2007 , in which the NY face the undefeated Patriots. Hopefully unlike last time, the Pats will come out the victors.  This match up is especially important to me.

          I'm from NY but I'm a huge Pats fan, so as you can imagine this game is especially important for me. When these two teams played the first time I had to endure the trash-talk and torment following the loss, but I trash talked just as good as I got.  This game was heated last time. The patriots were 18-0 and if they won they would be the 2nd team in history to go undefeated.  Needless to say this game started out as a time of interesting rhetoric.

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          The time before the game consisted of a heated match on both sides. I happened to be in the middle of it, being a Pats fan in Giants country. Also going to an all boys school where football was king didn't help either.  The rhetoric was harsh. Giants fans would make comments in the hallways and us Pats fans would band together to shout them down and tell them to gt their diapers ready because they are gonna be s**ting the bed when the Pats steam-roll them. We were cocky to be sure. But this was an old rivalry. This went beyond 2 football teams; it was a battle between two cities that had been going on for almost a century in the sports world. 

          NYC and Boston have always been close rivals in the world of sports: Yankees and Redsocks, Pats and Jets, Knicks and Celtics (kinda :p). So this battle of the two cities was one that both were ready for. Being in between the two, the people around me tend to spit or mix and match between the two even within the family. Me and my cousins are large Pats fans, but our Grandfather was a Giants fan. You had propaganda all over the area trying to get people to support one team or the other. Since both cities are heavily represented the Capital Region of NY could get pretty tense when there was a Boston/NYC game.  Where it was most apparent though was in the advertising. It was funny how around us businesses would either support both teams or neither team. No one wanted to lose business so it was interesting, watching the wording used in these commercials. One of my favorites, was a skit the NFL put on before the game laying out the differences between the two cities. It showes 2 groups of guys trash-talking about how one city is better than another. Unfortunately I was unable to find the video, but it is a good demonstration of the hostility and rivalry between the 2 groups. It put into words what this game represented for both teams, and even more for both communities.

           Not being home, I can only imagine what it going on now. Probably the same sort of talk and trash-talk as before. I've nticed a lot more people talking about a "redemption" game for the Pats and I really hope they're right. In my opinion the talk has been less cocky and we have more athletic gems on the Pats than we have since the 2004 season when we still had the greats like Bruschi, Moss and Venateri. We have the fear factors of Gronkowski and Hernadez, as well as big Vince Wilfork and Warren on defense. If we win I can't even begin to explain the talk that will occur as us Pats fans will finally have our revenge for what was stolen in 2007. We'll see on Sunday, but no doubt this game is bound to be full of rhetorical gold.