PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

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Happy First Anniversary to PatsPropaganda.com!

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Yes the draft is finally here but it’s also the anniversary of our little Pats blog. Hard to believe it’s already been a year since PatsPropaganda.com went live. The evolution of the blog began with my first ever post on December 13th, 2007 at NewEnglandPatriotsNews.com.

I wrote on that blog for two and a half years along with side gigs with Bleacher Report, BostonSportz, and PatsPulpit, eventually leading me to start the PatsPropaganda twitter handle on April 17th, 2009. My sister then bought the PatsPropaganda.com domain a year later as a birthday present, some help starting out on Tumblr, and on April 28th, 2010 we went live.

It’s been an amazing year for the blog. We won TruFan.com/CSNNE’s Best Patriots Blog Award, and served as a Patriots panelist for the Boston Sports Then & Now Blogapalooza, but what has been most exciting is hearing from Patriots fans from around the world. Connecting with my readers and fellow bloggers has established an entire network of new friends and colleagues that I hope only continues to grow.

I’d like to give some special shout outs my podcast partner Erik Frenz, BST&N’s Joe Gill and Nick Stevens, aka the mastermind behind Fitzy. You guys have been a huge part of this past year and I thank you for your great work and support that inspires me to keep up.

A special thanks has to go to my sister Sarah, without whom I’d still be toiling on an anonymous blog that nobody could find. And I can’t just thank one sister, so thanks to Mary as well for being my Patriots partner in crime!

Finally, a huge thanks to everyone who stops by this space and reads what I have to say on all things Pats-related. Your supportive comments and tweets are a huge inspiration for me to keep on keeping on!

We have even more fun stuff in the works to go with our latest additions of the PatsPropaganda & Frenz Podcast, and our ever-growing Youtube channel dedicated to putting all the best Pats videos in one easy, accessible place. We’re excited to see where it all leads, but we’re definitely having a ton of fun while doing it.

So a final thanks to everyone. At this moment no one knows where the NFL is headed but no matter what we’ll be there blogging Pats.

Go Pats!

Mike D.

The Steeler Sign That Gave Birth to a Patriots Blogger

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It was 2007, the Patriots were in the midst of a perfect regular season and I had yet to see them. The WGA writers strike had crippled my real job, leaving me with a 25% pay cut and only half days to work. So I took off to hit what looked on paper like the last major roadblock between my beloved New England Patriots and 16-0.

As we tailgated in grey, slushy conditions near Gillette Stadium a plane overhead was pulling a sign that instantly caught the attention of every man, woman and hoodie outside (and I assume inside) the stadium. I took out my camera and clicked a picture:

Ah yes, a friendly Spygate reference. The catalyst for the 2007 Pats to lay waste to everyone they faced. An incredible and historic season that saw the Pats come within 3 minutes of being the undisputed best team of all time.

As I waited in line for a port-a-potty, a Steeler fan who had made the trip shook his head. He seemed to know that flying such a sign would pretty much ensure the Patriots would come out pissed off and ready to play.

And guess what? He was right.

I returned home after the game and, while scanning craigslist for a job that might get some more income coming in, I spotted an ad looking for bloggers to blog about their favorite sports teams.

Hmmm. I was a writer. I loved the Patriots. And I could even make one to two cents per day! I was sold. So for my first post I grabbed the picture I had clicked of the sign that had been flown over the stadium.

Thus began my blogging career  and I have to say I owe at least part of it to the anonymous Steeler fan who felt compelled to poke the Patriots in the eye just before the game.

Here is a link to that first ever blog post. 

Why I Blog About the Patriots

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NOTE: This article was written shortly after I began blogging about the Patriots in 2008. I look at this now as my mission statement as a blogger, so I’m reposting it.

As a sports blogger, I feel compelled to comment on the Costas Now segment in which Deadspin.com head honcho Will Leitch and Friday Night Lights author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger went toe-to-toe over the value of sports blogging (while Braylon Edwards patiently twiddled his thumbs).

Buzz gets pretty fired up about the whole thing, as you can see here, but Leitch does a good job holding his own. Bissinger’s biggest complaint is that anyone can post anything and thus the quality of sports reporting is going down the tubes. 

Earlier in the piece, Michael Schur, one ofThe Office’s writers and a blogger for Fire Joe Morgan, makes the argument that the presence of blogs account for complete transparency in journalism and, therefore, they are a beacon of democracy.

I don’t know if I would go that far, but I would say that blogs are the future and, while the writing style and skills necessary to be successful are different than traditional journalism, there are still basic tenets that anyone who consistently writes to a readership should follow. 

I understand Bissinger’s argument. There are many blogs out there just looking to find dirt on people, and I believe Perez Hilton (purposely no link) is the ultimate example of everything Buzz hates.

It’s sad that a mean-spirited gossip site, without any other purpose than tearing people down and exposing unflattering pictures, can gain so much popularity. But the National Enquirer was around long before the Internet.

Like anything, you would hope that quality sports reporting will be respected and passed along, and those just looking to unjustly criticize athletes will fall by the wayside. Ultimately, I can only worry about what I post here and on my blog, and from the beginning I’ve avoided negative and obscene material.

I write about football, not about players taking rips from beer bongs on their days off.

Gone are the days of sports fans sitting down and reading the morning sports section for a well-crafted account of last night’s big game. Fans in 2008 want constant updates about everything their team is doing. Who’s practicing, who’s injured, and how bad is it; who’s looking good in preseason practice.

Most fans aren’t getting this news at home—they’re getting it at work while they scan the Internet, and the more updates a site can offer, the more hits it is going to get.

Though it may make professional writers like Bissinger upset, volume is trumping quality these days. Bloggers who can produce a high volume of quality material will be the most successful.

I love watching the Patriots. I root against the other teams, but there’s a bond between NFL fans.

This isn’t life or death, but it’s fun to pretend it is.

I may make fun of the Jets, Dolphins, and the rest of the NFL teams who get in the Pats’ way, but no more than I would expect in return. I’m not going to games looking to pick fights with fans from other teams (though some healthy trash-talking is always fun).

That’s the perspective from which I blog. Sports are meant to be fun, and the true fan’s voice is one that is never heard from traditional journalists. I find a fanatic’s account of a game or team to be often much more interesting that an impartial observer’s.

We are the ones who live and die with every touchdown, interception, and Super Bowl loss. And who are we kidding? There are no more impartial observers. Just ask “Judas” Tomase and the Boston Herald.