HOUSTON _ Unless you are from Georgia, married to someone from Georgia or you are Roger Goodell, you must be rooting for the New England Patriots against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI.
Unless you prefer pork loin to top sirloin, Julian Lennon over John Lennon and the Rob Lowe who has cable, you can't possibly not want the Patriots to keep doing what they're doing for as long as Tom Brady and Bill Belichick shall live.
(Oh, stop it with Deflategate and Spygate. Unless you know all the facts about either of the incidents for which the Patriots were censured over the past decade, just cease the sanctimony.)
This is the greatest dynasty in the history of its sport.
The Pittsburgh Steelers won all four Super Bowls they played in between the 1974 and '79 seasons. The San Francisco 49ers appeared in and won five Super Bowls between 1981 and '94, a span of 14 seasons. The Green Bay Packers won five championships in seven years beginning in 1961.
What the Patriots are doing is a greater achievement than any of those.
What the Patriots are doing is preposterous verging on impossible.
The NFL of the past two decades is built to be egalitarian. Increasingly, there is little, sometimes imperceptible, margin between good teams and bad teams.
The league promotes parity, boasts of its equality. Literally brags about it.
"We had one of the most competitive seasons in the history of the NFL," Goodell, the commissioner, said at his annual press conference here this week. "By average margin of victory, it was just slightly over 10 points a game, which is the lowest since 1935, when I believe we averaged about 24 points versus our 46 now. We also had a record number of games decided within a seven-point margin."
Yet, here the Patriots are again, playing for the Lombardi Trophy.
Against everything the NFL tries to be _ particularly with its limits on money each team can spend and a draft that rewards the bottom finishers _ the Patriots are in their seventh Super Bowl of this millennium and eighth of the salary cap era, which began in 1994.
A Patriots victory Sunday would give quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick five Super Bowl rings apiece. Both would be records _ breaking Brady's tie with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw for most for a quarterback and Belichick's tie with Don Shula for most by a head coach.
What they have accomplished is so incredible that a quip by Troy Aikman almost seem plausible.
"Sounds to me they may want to think about renaming that trophy," the Hall of Fame quarterback said this week.
Aikman, who will be the color analyst on Sunday's FOX telecast, was responding to an observation about Belichick having been a coach in 10 Super Bowls, including one as a Patriots assistant and two as a Giants assistant. That's almost 20 percent of all editions of the game.
Just the fact the Patriots have participated in almost half and will be on the verge of winning more than a quarter of the past 16 Super Bowls is enough to get Belichick at least a hyphen. Or perhaps it could someday be referred to as the Lombardichick Trophy.
Vince Lombardi coached those Packers teams that won three of the final NFL Championship games in a league that had 14 teams and then won the first two Super Bowls, which was at that time between the champions of the NFL and the even smaller AFL.
Winning on a consistent basis in today's NFL is like trigonometry compared to the multiplication of the league in the 1960s, or the algebra of the '70s and '80s or even '90s.
There are more teams with more roster turnover, as veteran players either switch teams for more money or are forcibly replaced by younger players who cost less money.
It shows up in results _ for everyone but the Patriots.
The Falcons are the eighth different team to have represented the NFC in the past 10 Super Bowls. The Patriots just played in their sixth straight AFC title game and are in their fourth Super Bowl in 10 years.
This will be the sixth opponent the Patriots have faced in their seven Super Bowls since Belichick and Brady teamed up for their first Super Bowl victory following the 2001 season. Since then, the Patriots have gone more than two years without getting back to the game just once. No other team has been to more than three Super Bowls in that span.
The Patriots have won at least 10 games in 14 straight seasons. No other NFL team has a current streak longer than five seasons.
If the Patriots weren't doing it, no one would be. It's that difficult and that simple.
You must admire that.
And even if you can't bring yourself to even grudgingly admire them, there is another reason to be pulling for the Patriots on Sunday ' to see the blessedly awkward postgame trophy presentation with the Goodell congratulating the principals on the team he punished in the aftermath of the dubious Deflategate scandal.
Even if you are from Georgia or are married to someone from Georgia, you would have to enjoy that.
