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Power struggle: Red Sox vs. Patriots

There’s no doubting that Boston is one of the most passionate sports towns in the United States, and that the Bruins and Celtics run a distant third and fourth in the race for the hearts of Bostonians.

The Red Sox hold the top spot, but is their reign in jeopardy? The Patriots have won two of the last three Super Bowls, and have firmly entrenched themselves as the No. 2 team in this town. Are they a threat to overtake the Sox? We’ll take both sides of this argument, and we’ll ask you to put your two cents in as well by voting in our survey to the right.

It's no contest -- Sox on top

By Eric Wilbur, Boston.com

Making the argument that the Patriots are within striking distance of overtaking the Red Sox as the region’s most popular team is about as misled as concluding that “Frasier” was superior in popularity to “Cheers” just because it won an Emmy more recently.

Like the Patriots, yes there’s more recent hardware, but when it comes down to which one is more beloved, it’s quite simply no contest.

My colleague to the right will try to have you believe the gap is closing. Sure. It’s closing between now and Armageddon, too. What’s your point?

Whereas the Pats are defending Super Bowl champions, the Red Sox have not won it all in quite some time. (You know when. I don’t need to keep repeating it.) But around here, success does not always breed popularity. If that were the case, we’d all be Yankee fans.

If there were ever any Exhibit A that any debater needed to prove his or her point, it doesn’t get any more convincing than what happened around these parts last December. As the Patriots were winning game after game after game, en route to a stunning 15 wins in a row, and oh, yeah, another Super Bowl championship, all anybody was talking about was the deal that was going to bring Alex Rodriguez to Boston. Let me reiterate. The Patriots were in the midst of one of the most successful NFL seasons in history, and hot stove baseball was all the rage in the Hub.

It got so bad that some Patriots players complained about the coverage they were receiving. A local radio station’s all-day Patriots coverage was interrupted when Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra called in from his Hawaiian honeymoon to ask why he was being shipped out of town.

A few weeks after the Pats finished off the Panthers in the Super Bowl, Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein showed up at spring training wearing an old-school Pat Patriots hat to show his support for New England’s NFL franchise. Mind you, this is the team that had just won a Super Bowl, and Epstein’s gesture played like Bush waving a Kerry placard.

For a couple days in late July, yes, the Pats are more popular as things start anew, maybe for a week or two in September depending on how the Sox are doing. Head-to-head, that’s all the Patriots have on the Olde Town Team. Each time the streets of Boston were transformed into a sea of red, white, and blue following the Super Bowl victories two of the last three years, with a million people crammed into the city, all anyone could say was, “I can only imagine if the Red Sox were to win it all what this would look like.”

If the Patriots are more popular, then they are so merely because of their recent run of success. Call me crazy, but that sounds like jumping on the bandwagon, an action that most Bostonians (not including those New York college influxes) despise. Yeah, one or two of us might have hopped on the Revolution’s bandwagon when they were in the MLS title game two years back, but that’s only because not many of us had heard of them.

Whereas what it means to be a Red Sox fan is passed down among generations, what it means to be a Pats fan has only started to be defined. After decades of possessing no true identity, the team has really only started to formulate one over the past 10 years, when Bob Kraft took over the team.

The Red Sox? We all know what it means to be a fan. It’s not always fun, but that’s part of the team’s distinctiveness. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. That’s why you won’t see a bandwagon parked anywhere near Kenmore Square. They’re all down on Route One. If you hurry up, maybe my colleague can give you a ride.

Pats gaining ground in this town

By David Lefort, Boston.com

If I tried to convince you that Boston has become a Patriots town, I'd get laughed out of every bar, living room and corner store from here to Springfield. This region still belongs to the Red Sox.

But what I will tell you is the gap is closing between New England's love for the Sox (actually, it's more like a dysfunctional obsession) and its growing passion for the No. 2 team in this part of the country, the Patriots.

It wasn't long ago that the Pats were the laughingstock of the region (not unlike today's Celtics), a badly run organization that posted a one-win season in 1990 and just two wins in 1992. But when Bill Parcells came to town in 1993, the franchise began slowly building a home in the hearts of New Englanders, earning a permanent place there in the Bill Belichick era thanks to two Super Bowl victories in the last three years.

For some title-starved Boston sports fans, the Patriots are the only professional club to have won a championship in their adult lifetimes. The 1986 Celtics were the last title team in these parts before 2001, and we're reminded constantly of the last time the Red Sox won the World Series.

The Patriots represent everything the Red Sox are not: controversy-free and confidence-inspiring. While Sox die-hards have learned to count on their local nine letting them down, they've had to unlearn that attitude when rooting for the Pats.

Some other reasons why the Pats are gaining ground:

The atmosphere: The Pats play in a $325 million state-of-the-art stadium, while the Sox compete in a ballpark that was built in 1912, in which a good number of seats don't even point in the right direction. Don't get me wrong, I love Fenway, but it's no contest here.

The leaders: Belichick vs. Terry Francona. Need I say more?

The stars: There's no doubt Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is the No. 1 sports figure in this town. The most popular Red Sox players (Nomar Garciaparra, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez) make more headlines with their whining than their actions on the field.

Pride: How many Red Sox championship t-shirts and videos (and no, "Still We Believe" doesn't count) have you purchased in the last 86 years? I'm guessing that 2003 AL wild-card champion merchandise is still sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Yet I'll bet most of you have at least two pieces of Pats Super Bowl gear. Am I wrong?

Let's face it, Sox fans have Patriots envy.

When we talk to our buddies from other parts of the country, we can only cringe and turn red in the face when the conversation turns to the Yankees, Babe Ruth, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner or now Aaron Boone (I just cringed and turned red in the face when I wrote that).

During football season, however, we get to go on the offensive. Mr. Bills fan getting in your grill? A quick "How's Drew Bledsoe working out for you?" will shut him up. Is someone trying to argue that Peyton Manning is a better quarterback than Brady? You've got four good reasons (i.e., the number of interceptions Manning threw against the Pats in last year's AFC Championship Game) to make him regret that comment.

You see, it's fun to be a Patriots fan. It's torture to be a member of Red Sox Nation. Sooner or later, more people are going to realize that. And when summer begins to turn to fall and the Red Sox are in the middle of yet another late-season slide out of contention, the prevailing attitude won't be "we'll get'em next year," it'll be, "how long before football season?"