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Sunday Edition
February 1, 2026
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On Monday, Front Office Sports sends our biggest squad yet to the Bay Area for Super Bowl week, where we’ll conduct dozens of interviews on Radio Row and roam the scene for news. This year, my hometown team is in the game. Go ahead, roll your eyes, hate the Patriots … but don’t you hate these Patriots a little less than the last time?
— Dan Roberts [[link removed]]
Is It Time You Stopped Hating the Patriots? [[link removed]]
Imagn Images
When news broke earlier this week that Bill Belichick did not get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame [[link removed]] on his first shot, the sports world reacted with shock and outrage [[link removed]].
I wasn’t surprised. People really, really, really hate the Patriots. As a Massachusetts kid who has lived in the New York City area since 2009, I know that as well as anyone. My Giants-fan and Jets-fan friends virulently hate the Pats; so do nearly all NFL fans who aren’t from New England, right?
Patriots hate runs deep. Admittedly, there are a lot of data points in that stew: Spygate (legitimate); Deflategate (fake); Aaron Hernandez; Malcolm Butler’s end-zone interception; Julian Edelman’s bobble catch; 28-3; Dave Portnoy; Antonio Brown; Alex Guerrero and the TB12 Method; Belichick’s accidental Brian Flores text; Bob Kraft at the massage parlor; Brady’s MAGA hat; plus, sheer exhaustion from all the winning.
Belichick and the Patriots were like Darth Vader and the Empire in Star Wars. I get it. It’s how I feel about the Yankees.
Success Breeds Enemies
When I was a cub reporter at Fortune in 2010, a senior features writer was writing a big profile of Kraft [[link removed]], and I worked on the charts for the story. One of them demonstrated Kraft’s dominance over his fellow owners by comparing his average wins per season since 1994, when he bought the team, to all of the other owners in that time period. Kraft, with 10.38 wins, edged out Broncos owner Pat Bowlen’s 9.56, Jeffrey Lurie’s Eagles with 9, and Jerry Jones’s Cowboys with 8.75. And Kraft steamrolled them all in Super Bowl appearances (5) and rings (3).
And that was more than 15 years ago. Since then, Kraft and the Patriots have been to five more Super Bowls and won two of them, with a third on the line Sunday.
How about the Patriots as a business off the field? Forbes pegs them as the No. 4 most valuable NFL franchise worth $9 billion (I’d argue for higher, but the stadium is 24 years old and it’s out in Foxborough). The team would surely sell for substantially more than that, since almost every franchise in the past 10 years has sold for well above its media valuation, and Kraft sold an 8% stake to private equity [[link removed]] in September at a more than $9 billion valuation already.
You can’t escape [[link removed]] Patriots dynasty alums on sports TV and radio. Brady is unavoidable as the lead Fox NFL color commentator, and he has already gone from maligned [[link removed]] to garlanded [[link removed]] by sports media critics [[link removed]]. Randy Moss, Tedy Bruschi, Damien Woody, and Jason McCourty are mainstays on ESPN; Devin McCourty and Rodney Harrison are on NBC; Logan Ryan is on CBS; Gronk is on Fox. Brian Hoyer and David Andrews have a podcast; Rob Ninkovich has a podcast. They all won rings and learned Belichick’s brutalist media discipline.
George Walker IV/ Tennessean.com/Imagn Images
The Chiefs are about where the Patriots were at the end of the first half of the Brady dynasty. Five Super Bowl appearances in six years, three wins. But somehow the Kansas City dynasty has never needled people in the same way. Andy Reid smiling in State Farm ads doesn’t foment the level of distaste Belichick and Brady’s relentless machine did.
Harder to Hate
Now it’s a new Patriots era. They haven’t been to the Super Bowl in seven years. And dare I say, they’re a lot more likable this time.
Brady and Belichick are gone. Can you really gather the same level of hate for plucky Drake Maye, married to his childhood sweetheart who’s gone viral for her baking, and locker-room motivator Mike Vrabel?
In fact, these Patriots are underdogs. It feels like where the Patriots were in 2001, when the 199th draft pick, Tom Brady, subbed in for Drew Bledsoe and never looked back, and still-new owner Bob Kraft had taken a chance on Bill Belichick, a loser from the Browns. The most annoying thing about these Patriots is the “Drake “Drake Maye” Maye” jokes.
And that means these Patriots could still do a heel turn and become the Empire again.
SPONSORED BY ATHLETES UNLIMITED
Women’s Sports Is Big Business
On Feb. 26, Front Office Sports and Athletes Unlimited are joining forces to host Future of Women’s Sports with speakers Sydney Colson, Athletes Unlimited athlete; Uzma Rawn Dowler of Major League Baseball; Michelle Kennedy of the Nashville Predators; Lara Krug of the Kansas City Chiefs; Carolyn Braff of PepsiCo; Nancy Dubuc of TOGETHXR; Jon Patricof of Athletes Unlimited; and others.
This half-day summit [[link removed]]—hosted in one of the country’s most dynamic sports cities—will forecast where women’s sports is headed and highlight the vast opportunities that still lie ahead.
Set in advance of the AU Pro Basketball Championship game, this experience will bring together collaborators in culture, business, and competition to explore what’s next.
This is your front-row seat to the future of women’s sports. Don’t miss your opportunity to join us— request to attend [[link removed]].
Super Bowl LX Events Will Spread From San Francisco to San Jose
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
In one week, the Patriots and Seahawks will play in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium. But the venue, which has been home to the 49ers since 2014, is not actually in downtown San Francisco—it’s roughly 40 miles south in Santa Clara. That’s about an hour’s drive away from the heart of San Francisco, depending on California’s infamous traffic.
The distance from downtown to Levi’s Stadium is a striking contrast from Super Bowl LIX last year, when Caesars Superdome was practically walking distance from everything game-related in the heart of New Orleans [[link removed]]: the Super Bowl Experience fan zone, Super Bowl Radio Row, and nearly everything else. In 2024, Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium [[link removed]] also had a prime location, just off the Las Vegas Strip.
Of course, not every Super Bowl stadium is in downtown proper—Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., was about 15 miles outside Phoenix. But as the NFL’s championship returns to the Bay Area for the first time since 2016, the footprint for this week’s festivities is massive.
FOS reporter David Rumsey [[link removed]] writes about the Super Bowl week that is here, there, and everywhere [[link removed]]—by design.
Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Games [[link removed]] Show [[link removed]] Shop [[link removed]] Written by Daniel Roberts [[link removed]] Edited by Meredith Turits [[link removed]], Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]
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