It has been my greatest guilty pleasure to watch and love NFL football for many years now. It’s a guilty pleasure in general because of the violence associated with the sport, and the traumatic brain injuries. It’s a guilty pleasure in particular because I am a New England Patriots fan.

I became a Patriots fan in the early 90s when I first moved to New England (first to Rhode Island during my final year in the US Navy, and then moved to Massachusetts where I’ve been since 1994). I loved Drew Bledsoe and team before the Patriots became “the Evil Empire”.

Who knew the Patriots were going to become so good one day?

I get why people hate the Patriots, for many of the same reason that most of us love to hate the Yankees. It’s annoying how good the Patriots were for so long. If I weren’t a Patriots fan, I’d feel the same way.

Then the two scandals, Spy Gate and Deflate Gate. I have trouble believing based on things I’ve read and interviews I’ve heard with non-Patriot NFL folks that the Patriots were the only team filming other teams and tampering with the footballs (apparently it’s quite common for QBs to do this). I don’t like cheating, and I know I sound like an apologist. I just have trouble believing that the Pats were alone in this. Still, the Patriots should have handled it better.

Belichick was completely unlikeable. There’s no level on which he was likeable. I get that. I think he was a very skillful coach (who has since jumped the shark). But honestly, I’m glad he’s gone.

Then there was Tom Brady. I believe he’s the best QB in NFL history. I feel lucky that he was the QB of the Patriots for two decades and made it so fun to follow them for 20 years. I admire his work ethic and dedication. I don’t know much about him as a human being. He’s likeable (in my opinion) in interviews, unlike Belichick. Is he a Trumper? I don’t know. He and his ex-wife were in the same social circles as Trump, and so he had that MAGA hat in early days of Trump before we (or some of us) realized just how horrible he is. Brady seems to have distanced himself. I’m sure Brady’s politics are not my own. I don’t know what to do with that, though. As a kid, my favorite sport was baseball, and my favorite team was the Dodgers. My favorite player was Steve Garvey. Garvey now turns out to be politically pretty cringe. What do I do with that? I don’t know.

But Belichick is gone, and so is Brady. I personally find Vrabel infinitely more likeable than Belichick, and so far I don’t know anything about Drake Maye to dislike. But it’s still challenging to ignore Robert Kraft, the owner of the Pats. He seems to be a Trumper. He distanced himself for a while after January 6, but now he’s back on board which is pretty disgusting.

But you don’t fall in love with sports teams based on their owners. You just don’t. Most NFL owners are filthy rich and have politics that are very unlike my own. If I decided to stop rooting for the Patriots because of the owner’s politics, I’d basically just have to stop following spectator sports, period.

I’m still rooting for Team USA in the Olympics, in spite of the horrors of the USA politically-speaking.

You root with your heart based on loyalties that are built up over a lifetime and have to do with family connections and geography and memories.

In the end, Kraft makes my guilty pleasure of rooting for the Patriots that much guiltier. Apparently his son Jonathan disagrees with his father’s politics. Some day Jonathan will be the owner, and perhaps rooting for the Patriots will be less complicated then.

In the meantime, I have been writing to the Patriots telling them about their “Trump problem” and how they really need to think about their fanbase, most of us being NOT Trumpers, most of us feeling that Kraft needs to say something publicly about Trump’s shameful behavior. Is it the perfect solution? No. But if we’re honest, professional sports are problematic in lots of ways. And as a wise friend of mine said, maybe we ought not worship men who play with balls for a living.