The coaching staff is just one reason to hate the Patriots. Elsa/Getty Images
At this time of year everyone has some kind of ranking published for all 32 NFL teams. I didn’t want to be left out, thus I bring to you the 32 NFL teams ranked by “hateability”.
Sure, I might have made up the word hateability, but I saw that somebody had done a likeability ranking a few years ago and I didn’t want to copy them.
So here are are 32 NFL teams ranked from least hated to most, and a quick reason why.
32) Cleveland Browns - You can’t hate them. Feel sorry for them? Sure. Hate? Naw.
31) Kansas City Chiefs - The Chiefs fans are really nice and Andy Reid seems like everyone’s favorite uncle.
30) Buffalo Bills - When you lose four super bowls, and then don’t do anything after that, nobody hates you, they just laugh at you.
29) Seattle Seahawks - Lucky for the Seahawks the departure of Richard Sherman has moved them way up the list. Of course, some people don’t like Pete Carroll, but those people are asses. Also, Russell Wilson seems cool.
28) Chicago Bears - Sweetness, the Refrigerator and the Super Bowl Shuffle made everyone a Bears fan, despite Jim McMahon being a total tool.
27) Jacksonville Jaguars - They burst on the scene as an expansion franchise and then sucked for a long time, but with a killer defense and running attack it’s safe to say that nobody gives a bleep about the Jags.
26) Indianapolis Colts - If you hate Andrew Luck you probably hate babies, kittens and old people.
25) Miami Dolphins - Dan Marino made everyone a Dolphins fan. Of course everyone hated them for the two years that Nick Saban was their coach, but that was only temporary.
24) Atlanta Falcons - It’s not that people hate the Falcons, it’s just that nobody likes a choker.
23) Green Bay Packers - You would think that a team with such a winning tradition would be more hated, but everyone loves cheese and beer and that’s what most of the fans bodies are made of. They would be higher on the list if Jim McMahon hadn’t played there in 1995 and 1996.
22) New Orleans Saints - The Saints sucked for so long we all just got used to feeling sorry for them.
21) Houston Texans - Speaking of feeling sorry for a team…
20) San Francisco 49ers - A lot of reasons to like this team but they tumbled down this list after adding Richard Sherman.
19) Arizona Cardinals - Nobody cares enough about the Cardinals to hate them. They’d probably be higher but Jim McMahon played for them in 1994.
18) Denver Broncos - Everyone loves John Elway and Peyton Manning. Also, they have cool colors and you can get high during the game.
17) Baltimore Ravens - Lets be real, the average person probably hates this team because of Ray Rice, but they should hate them because of that stupid pregame dance Ray Lewis did for years.
16) Los Angeles Rams - The greatest show on turf was pretty fun to watch, but even their own fans don’t care enough to bother going to the games. It’s not really hate it’s more apathy with this squad.
15) Tennessee Titans - Bud Adams was a horrible owner, but most people outside of Houston didn’t care about that. That said, just about everyone grew to hate Jeff Fisher.
14) Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Hard Knocks made people like this team a bit more than they probably should. Winston is really easy to hate, especially after watching him eat all those Ws. In fact, this might not be low enough after rewatching.
13) Carolina Panthers - Cam is prone to a hissy fit after a loss. Nobody likes a hissy fit.
12) Minnesota Vikings - Purple is ugly (sorry Prince...RIP). Also, Jim McMahon played for the Vikings (1993) so that’s enough of a reason to hate them.
11) Detroit Lions - People love Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson, but the fact that this crap team is forced down our throats every Thanksgiving makes everyone hate them.
10) New York Jets - Most people only hate the Jets because they are in New York. Case in point, if they were the St. Louis Jets, nobody would care about this team enough to hate them.
9) Los Angeles Chargers - A lot of folks don’t like Phillip Rivers, and that’s fine. But the real reason people hate the Chargers? Jim McMahon played for them (1989).
8) New York Giants - I think most people feel sorry for Eli Manning because he looks like he’s lost all the time, but the real reason people hate the Giants is ODB. And also, because they play in in a different state, despite being called the NEW YORK Giants, they play in New Jersey.
7) Cincinnati Bengals - Boomer Esiason was easy to hate, but so was Pack Man Jones, and all of the legal problems the Bengals players have had over the years.
6) Oakland Raiders - I’ll probably get death threats from their fans just for having them this low, but my goodness, just pick a city to play in already (and stay there). Also Gruden in the booth calling games is great, Gruden on the sidelines calling plays is a jerk.
5) Pittsburgh Steelers - Everyone hates winners, and this franchise has done plenty of that. Big Ben’s off the field trouble didn’t help, but Mike Tomlin seems like a good dude, so this could be worse.
4) Washington Redskins - Dan Gilbert is a d bag; plus the name is offensive to plenty of people.
3) Dallas Cowboys - Two words: Michael Irvin. Two more words, Dez Bryant. Last two words: fan base.
2) Philadelphia Eagles - Their fans booed a baby and called an old lady the C word. As if that wasn’t enough, Jim McMahon played there for 3 years (1990-1992).
1) New England Patriots - Oh boy, where do I begin. The coach? The owner? The QB? The bro at tight end? The Cheating? The winning? The success? The fans? All equally great reasons to hate this team.
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They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”