I'll be the first to admit that for the most part, we Boston fans are apologists for our beloved franchises. We back our teams, however honorable our intentions, with a passion that can sometimes border on blind idolatry. Tom Brady (who got off surprisingly easy in the media, particularly around these parts, for splitting with his "baby's mama" before the child's birth) and David Ortiz (whose production reportedly suffered early in the season because he was flying back and forth between endorsement shoots during off days) seemingly can do no wrong in the eyes of New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox fans. This is not to say that Boston sports fans are unintelligent, just that we have a propensity to think the best of our teams in spite of the fact that their rosters, lineups, rotations and lines are composed of flawed human beings just like you and me.

Has any player currently on the Red Sox roster ever taken steroids or HGH? Investigation into the matter (Mitchell Report, etc.) indicates that several Sox players have, but you won't find many Sox fans willing to publicly admit as much. Are some members of the Celtics and Bruins womanizers, alcohol abusers or drug users? Societal standards lean toward the affirmative, but pull a passer-by decked out in the green and white or the black and gold aside and ask them that question and they'll likely answer unequivocally, "No way." Did Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots knowingly bend or break the rules established by the Competition Committee of the National Football League, causing a media frenzy that has since snowballed into the scandal we now know as "Spygate?" Uh, yeah, they did, but most of us (this site included, to some degree) have sought to discredit and downplay the significance of the information provided by Matt Walsh, employing a "the-Pats-can-do-no-wrong" mindset in order to alleviate the organization of blame and simultaneously justify our belief in the benevolence, purity, sportsmanship, etc. of the game.

What's my point? In short, we're supportive to a fault. It's true of most sports fans and most definitely is not exclusive to the New England region; however, if you had the displeasure of reading Tony Massarotti's latest column, you'd have been led to believe that we're the bottom-feeders of the world of sports fandom:

Not in New England, now the official home of yahoos, hero worshipers and gutless suck-ups. To this entire group, it was all about whether there was a tape; anything else doesn’t matter so much... Try to discern which members of the media show up to work wearing Patriots Super Bowl jackets, and which of your pathetic, repressed middle-aged neighbors wear their Tedy Bruschi jerseys on Sundays. Meanwhile, take time to wonder if those same neighbors are blogging and posting on message boards while spending hours on hold so they might hear their voices on the radio. Listen, mom! Just like karaoke! These are the people who preserve the sports fantasy world that justifies their own sorry existence... Whether or not you think it was the Rams’ fault for not kicking Walsh off of the field during their walkthrough, if a reporter buried a lead like that, he wouldn’t be a reporter. Come to think of it, he’d probably be commissioner of the NFL.

Wow. Not really pulling any punches there, huh Tony? I wonder if anyone clued the high and mighty Mr. Tony Massarotti in on the fact that all those "pathetic, repressed middle-aged neighbors" and people who "preserve the sports fantasy world" to "justif[y] their own sorry existence" make up a significant amount of his readership. And what does it say about Massarotti that he relies on these people he chastises for the success of his career (and, subsequently, his employment status and income)? Sell-out? Hypocrite? Oh, and just for good measure, Tony overtly criticizes the commissioner and his handling of this situation (a great deal of the criticism merited, of course) - hope he wasn't planning on requesting a one-on-one interview with Roger Goodell anytime soon.

I get that Massarotti is playing devil's advocate to all the writers, reporters, commentators and analysts that have come out in support of the Patriots in spite of some pretty damning evidence. I also understand he feels he should defend the besmirched reputation of his co-worker, John Tomase (a rather noble endeavor in my view), but his hyperbolic rant succeeded only in alienating the entire population of New England. It's one thing to call us out on our (over)dedication; it's something totally different to slap a region of the country (and not without significance, the same region for which Massarotti writes) with the title of "Gutless Suck-ups."

Massarotti's worthy intentions of analyzing the events and information from a different angle and enlightening us to the fact that there's much more to this story than just whether or not there was a Super Bowl walkthrough videotape were entirely lost as a result of his poor execution.