I wrote this 2 years ago, and it's still true today...Always Champions.
I know people get angry when they talk about sports. In high school, I was a big San Francisco ’49ers fan, and I remember telling a guy on the high school football team that the 1989 San Francisco ‘49ers could have beaten the 1978 Pittsburgh Steelers, and then that guy punched me in the face. So, I know it’s an emotional topic for people.
But here goes. The New England Patriots under Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are the greatest football team ever, and probably the greatest sports franchise ever, and that includes the 1960s Boston Celtics and the 1998 New York Yankees. Actually, I’ll go so far as to say that the New England Patriots are the greatest organization ever. No, that doesn’t do it justice: they are the greatest collection of human beings in recorded history. Period. If you disagree, I’ll punch you in the face.
This is an incredibly unique and special time to be watching football – to be able to watch the greatest organization in human history advance down the field and destroy the competition – this is what America is all about. I’ve already vowed to camp out next fall and watch all 16 regular season Patriots game from start to finish, without even moving from the sofa, so great is this team. So special is this moment.
Now, this has nothing to do with the fact that I live in Boston. The reason I’m saying this is because of the ethos of the team, which all starts with Belichick. Here are two of his quotes, which explain their greatness:
“There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it’s not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together.”
- Bill Belichick
Crossing the Charles
We need more quotes like this in America. In this age of me, me, me and special interests, and Democrats vs. Republicans, here’s the greatest football coach of all time saying that the team is sometimes more important than the individual. Have you ever noticed how, after a Pats game, you’ll never hear the players bragging about themselves; they always deflect praise to their teammates, and give credit to everybody involved. There are no prima donnas or grand pooh-bahs on this team. They've even got the best quarterback that ever played the game, and he's always deflecting praise to the other guys on the team. That’s no accident - it’s coming from the top.
People who can’t stand or fathom the Patriots’ greatness just invent scandals that aren’t really scandals, like Spy-Gate or Deflate-Gate, because it’s hard to comprehend just how awesome they really are, so they have to knock them down with made-up bullshit about the pressure of footballs. Just go over to MIT or Harvard and one of our top notch professors will explain how the Ideal Gas Law works:
PV = NRT
Translation: Patriots Victory = Nothing but Raw Talent
And here’s another amazingly awesome quote from Belichick: “To live in the past is to die in the present.” How cool is that? It’s spirituality and football rolled up into one amazing sentence: like Zen mastery with an attitude, beating the crap out of the competition in the present moment. How can you not love that?
And besides their amazing team ethos, they have an unstoppable work ethic. “Do your job.” That’s all anybody says now, in Boston. I go to the grocery store, and it’s like everybody’s screaming: “Do your Job!” at each other, and if I ever come into work late, I’ve got my co-workers shouting at me: “Do your job!” And that’s just how we roll here in New England. We do our jobs. Because of Belichick. We all know that he would find out if we weren’t, and he’d kick us out of New England, and that would be really bad for us because then we wouldn’t live in the region of the country with the greatest sports team that ever existed. So, “do your job,” and thank God that you live in Boston.
Carl McCoy, copyright 2017
Check out my new book, "Job Hunter Road," a hilarious account of what it takes to go beyond the 9-5 daily grind, and to reclaim a passionate and unstoppable career by the force of your own will.