ITS A GREAT TIME TO BE A HATER

by WCT, The Ship of Fools

Have you ever had this conversation with a buddy of yours?

Your buddy - "I hate such-and-such-team!"

You - "Why?"

Your buddy - "I don't know, I just do."

Because I know I have.

That person is what we call a "Hater."

Now, the true definition of a hater is actually quite complicated. Just the act of hating alone does not necessarily make you a hater. Of course, if you went to Michigan and you hate Ohio State, that doesn't make you a hater. If you are a lifelong Dodgers fan and you hate the Giants, you're safe. A hater isn't someone who hates the arch-rival of their team. A hater is someone who hates, A) because a team is "too good," B) because it has become fashionable to bash a team, or C) "just because."

That being said, these miserable schadenfreude fiends have had a glorious time recently, because the most hated teams in sports have all fallen on hard times. As a result, haters, and the inner-hater in all of us, have had reason to smile. Chances are, if you read blogs like this one regularly, you were able to take great glee in the demise of at least one of the following:

The Duke Blue Devils - The freshest in our minds. Many have tried to downplay the apparent fall of Duke in recent tournaments, but consider this: their last four tournament games are, a loss to LSU in the '06 Sweet 16, a loss to Virginia Commonwealth in the '07 first round, a win (by the skin of their teeth) over Belmont in the '08 first round, and a decisive loss to West Virginia this past Saturday. Duke was the higher seed in each of those games and could have easily lost all of them (yes, the fourth would never have occurred if they lost the third, but you get my point). They keep fielding teams full of McDonald's All-American swingmen, with no inside presence, very little toughness, and the propensity for shrinking late in the season and in March.

Notre Dame Football - No college football team is more hated in this country than the Fighting Irish, and perhaps no team had a more disappointing season than the '07 ND team. Notre Dame started out the year 0-5 before struggling to finish 3-9. I don't think I have ever seen a sports bar erupt like the one I was at on November 3rd, when ND's triple-OT two-point conversion was stopped, and Navy defeated the Irish for the first time in 43 years. This was not a Navy bar mind you, just a bar full of haters.

The New York Yankees - I was listening to sports radio here in NYC the other day, and I heard the host say, presumably with a straight face, that "there may be a young 10-year-old boy or girl out there who is too young to remember what its like to experience a Yankees World Championship. That pretty much sums up the mentality of Yankees fans, and the reason the team is so hated. Well, not only have they not won the Series since 2000, but they were eliminated in the first round for the third consecutive year this past October. Not only that, but they had to suffer the indignity of making the postseason as the wild card team in '07! I hope someone covered the eyes of that poor, deprived, 10-year-old child.

The New England Patriots - The newest members of the club, but the smugness of their quarterback, coupled with the dickishness of their head coach, topped off by number of douchebags that make up their fanbase has made them climb the ranks of the hated very fast. I recognize that it is difficult to say that a team that went 18-1 suffered this past year, but when you consider the humongous difference between 19-0 and 18-1 (when the one loss occurs in the Super Bowl), and you take into account the manner in which they lost the Super Bowl, and the fact that Patriots fans had to be just insufferably arrogant when Randy Moss scored to give New England a 4th quarter lead, you realized that this season turned out to be heartbreaking for the Pats and their fans.