Survey Says: Patriots Fans are No. 1! (At Annoying Everybody Else)

I took enough Statistics in college to know that, while I don’t understand how opinion polls work, they do in fact work if they’re done right. With the proper scientific methods and factoring in the margin for errors, they can be uncannily predictive, even with a small sample size.

Now, I can’t speak for the methodology of a pest control company survey meant to determine which fan bases “bug” people (Puns: The highest form of comedy.) the most. But this one seems to have pretty much nailed it.

[W]e wanted to find out exactly which sports fans their peers find to be the most annoying or bothersome, and apply some hard numbers to those opinions. To do this, we reached out directly to every team’s fanbase in the four major American sports leagues as well as college football and basketball fans in general to survey them on which sports fans and fanbases they just can’t stand. All in all, we collected more than 13,500 responses, giving us a VERY thorough look into which fans bug other sports fans the most.

As sample sizes go, 13,500 is pretty impressive. Some of the pollsters researching presidential elections use 10% of that number. And I have no quarrel with the results of this one.

The fanbases in pro football. ranked most insufferable to least:

Across all major pro sports:

And here’s little loathing for the Bruins fans:

How anyone could be considered more hateable than Canadiens fans is beyond me. But the fact they didn’t even crack the Top 10 tells me America has forgotten they exist.

And just to recap the rest, Red Sox fans were second behind the Yankees and the Celtics were third behind Lakers and Golden State fans. Which should be a warning sign to us all that we’ve been slacking off and need to up our game. The NCAA ones are no surprise, with (in order) Alabama, Ohio State and Michigan topping the football charts and Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina leading in hoops.

But obviously I’m here to focus on the Patriots. This is exactly what I would’ve assumed the results of the survey would be. But it’s still a proud day, nevertheless.

This is what you’ve done to us, America. You drew first blood, not us. We would’ve been content with simply being just another nondescript fan base of just another wildly successful team. Offending nobody. Drawing no animosity. With no hatred in our hearts for our fellow man. Think the 49ers of the 90s, the Bills when they were winning or Packers fans whenever.

But no. You couldn’t let us be. You had to turn all the winning into one conspiracy theory after another. Spy cameras. Bugged locker rooms. Warm Gatorade. Jammed helmet radios. Scoreboards being messed with. Trick formations. Pressure gauges. You took away draft picks. Handed down suspensions. Changed the coverage rules. Tampered with a Hall of Fame cornerback. Took away the Tackle Eligible play. Decided that the coin flip – of all goddamned things, the flip of a coin – was somehow unfair.

We tried being nice. It didn’t work. The treatment only got worse as the winning went on. We ran out of cheeks to turn about two dozen scandals ago. Instead, we reacted with the only logical response of a rational mind: We went dark. You treated us like monsters, so we became monsters. Dedicating our lives to making yours and those of everyone else around us miserable.

So go ahead. Keep hating. Keep being annoyed and “bugged.” We’re happy to be the Joker to your Batman. You created us. And in resenting us the way you do, you complete us. #StillHere