January 30, 2008
Super Bowl contender validates Boston's sports dynasty
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The New England Patriots' 2008 Super Bowl appearance, as well as other athletic achievements, crowns Boston as the modern professional sports capital, according to a Purdue University sports historian."There is this sense in sports today that you cannot develop a professional sports team dynasty because of the cost with free agents and players' salaries," says Randy Roberts, Distinguished Professor of History and author of "The Rock, The Curse and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports."
"It's considered nearly impossible to be a consistent winner, but the New England Patriots have been able to build a dynasty. It's a great team and will likely be great for a few more years."
The New England Patriots are favored over the New York Giants in Sunday's (Feb. 3) Super Bowl. The Patriots won three Super Bowls in the last four years and just completed a perfect 16-game season.
"Boston is not a big market like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles," Roberts says. "Now the city has the best baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, and it will probably have the winningest basketball team, the Boston Celtics, in the Eastern Conference. Its football team will probably win fairly easily on Sunday. It's incredible to see one city that is dominant across the board."
Boston has not always been passionate about its sports. For almost 80 years, the inability of the Red Sox to win a World Series was attributed to the "Curse of the Bambino," named for Babe Ruth, who was traded by the Red Sox to the archrival New York Yankees. Following the transaction, the Yankees went on to win 26 World Series titles while the Red Sox waited 86 years for its 2004 win, which was repeated in 2007.
Roberts has made more than 50 appearances on television documentaries and films in the past 20 years for the History Channel, ESPN Classic, HBO, BBC, PBS, E!TV and on the ABC, CBS and NBC networks. As a pop culture historian, Roberts often is quoted in national media and appears on nationally syndicated radio shows. He is a regular on History Channel's "Reel To Real," and he also served as a consultant and on-camera expert for the Emmy-Award winning series "10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America" and the award-winning Ken Burns documentary "Unforgivable Blackness."
Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu
Source: Randy Roberts, (765) 494-0040, rroberts@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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