(After posting this yesterday I followed thefrozz's recommendation and have since posted it on the Pats Pulpit site. Link here. This should provide a few chuckles in an otherwise slow football time of year.) 

I've always been one of those people who have a morbid fascination with the things most contrary to those which I hold dearest. For example, I am a die-hard fan of Miller Lite. I've drank it for years. Love it, can't get enough of it. Considering naming my first-born child after it. Well, every once in a while I'll be at my favorite sports bar, aptly named The Sportsden, watching a Colts game perhaps, and I'll get the wild notion to order a Budweiser, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Why would you do this?", one might ask, when Miller Lite is the obviously superior beverage. Do you enjoy waking up the next morning with a splitting headache and the taste of fresh dump in your mouth?

The answer is, no, I do not. But sometimes I just can't help but wonder, "What makes this so great that thousands of idiots would spend their hard-earned dollars on an obviously inferior product?"

Earlier today I had the same thought about the New England Patriots. 

And like so many times in my past, instead of letting this errant thought go to wherever it is that unworthy thoughts go to after your brain is done farting them out, I decide to find out what attraction people have to these, the Buttweisers of Professional Football.

Now, I decide that the fastest way to know the heart and mind of the smelly beast known as  the Pats Fan would be to observe him in his natural environment. A place where, being amongst others of his kind, he would be most relaxed and forthcoming with his innermost thoughts and desires. So, I decide, my friends to enter the lair of the beast itself, the dreaded Pats Pulpit, Blogspot of the Devil...

I mean, if I wanted to divine the inner workings of the average fan of the greatest team in professional sports, the Indianapolis Colts, I would visit Stampede Blue, a worthy blogspot that hosts a variety of blogs, fanposts, comments and discussions by fans on the topic of their favorite team, the Indianapolis Colts. Now, that being given, one might conclude that the same might be said of the den of the enemy, the Pats Pulpit.

Right?

Wrong.

Upon visiting this ghost town of a site, the first thing I noticed (other than the proverbial tumbleweeds blowing across my vision) was the absence of my intended subject of study, the Pats Fan. It felt rather like those portions of National Geographic that we, the viewers, never see, in which the film crew sits for hours and days waiting... waiting for the merest hint of a sighting of their subject of study, the ever-elusive howler monkey (the howler monkey being the animal who's incessant shrieking jabber I most closely liken to that of a Pats fan), but who must finally pack up their gear and go home empty-handed.

Now don't get me wrong, this site appears to be professionally run and full of well-written and informative posts on the subject of the most overrated team in professional sports, the New England Patriots, but what it glaringly seems to lack is readers. At least the kind that participate...

Just by looking at the home page one can readily see the lopsided comparison to that of Stampede Blue, and through my love of all things sports I felt compelled to get to the bottom of this. To see it in X's and O's. To break it down. So, in the finest tradition of sports, I give you this...The Statistical Comparison:

Frequency of featured posts (the time elapsing between the most recent blog and the last one on the home page approximately):

• Stampede Blue: 64 hrs.
• Pats Pulpit: 63.5 hrs.

Like I said, pretty well-ran site, almost dead-on with ours.

Frequency of fanposts (how far back do the top ten headlines go back in the Recent Fanposts section):

• Stampede Blue: 17 days (avg. 1 post every 40.8 hrs.)
• Pats Pulpit: about a month (approx. 1 post every 72 hrs.)

Not very good for the Pats fans. We outpace them with posts occurring 43.3% more frequently. (Note: This may, however, be attributed to the fact that most Pats fans are known to be knuckle-dragging illiterates.)

Number/frequency of comments made on top ten fanposts combined (how much we the fans care about what others on our respective sites say):

• Stampede Blue: 128 comments (approx. 1 comment every 3 hrs. 11 mins.)
• Pats Pulpit: 96 comments (approx. 1 comment every 7.5 hrs.)
  Pretty bad considering their posts have been up 43.3% longer than ours. Conclusion: Pats fans are less than half as likely to listen to each other as opposed to listening to themselves.

Number of comments made on featured posts written by staff writers as seen on the home page (how much the fans care about the content being provided to them by their favorite fan site):

• Stampede Blue: 115 comments
• Pats Pulpit: 8 comments

Yes, boys and girls, you read that right, 8. A measly 8 comments compared to our 115. Pathetic...

And so on my search for the answer to the question "Why would one wish to be a Patriots fan when you could be a fan of the vastly superior and nearly god-like Indianapolis Colts?", I must concede defeat.

It seems that some of life's mysteries were just never meant to be solved...

(Note: all numbers based on the appearance of said home pages as of 12:00 p.m., July 4th. Maybe this had something to do with the results of my imperfect study. There's a good chance most Pats fans were too busy at local hospitals being treated for fireworks-related injuries to their throwing hands due to their inability to properly time their release. Ohhhh...)