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If the Vikings hadn't fallen apart Sunday and beaten the Eagles in the NFC Championship game, there would have been a feel-good buzz to the team in the Super Bowl, if for no other reason than it would have been the first time the game would have been hosted by a team in the game.

If the Jaguars had held on to beat the Patriots,fans could have gotten behind a team that had been wretched for so many years before finally getting its game together.

Instead, the Patriots are playing the Eagles.

Did you see the back page of Monday's New York Post?

Here's what columnist Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post wrote under the headline of "Have we ever seen anything like this hellhole of a Super Bowl" "Yes, this is the worst-case scenario for just about everyone who calls our city, its boroughs and its suburbs home. If you are a Jets fan, you are soon to enter a second decade of Patriots Envy, being force-fed an unlikely dynasty in New England when, for the first 40 or so years of their shared existence, the Patriots were the Jets' annual cousins in futility. And, of course, Giants fans detest the Eagles in a way that's almost hard to describe given the fact the Eagles haven't won a championship in 57 years and the Giants have won four in the last 31. Yes, Giants fans dislike the Cowboys and they abhor the Redskins, and take great delight in beating those two division rivals."

Read the rest of his column here

And here's what some other people are saying:

Matt Citak, writing for the CBS website in Denver put it this way: "Do we get behind the Patriots, who are looking to tie the Pittsburgh Steelers for the most Super Bowl Championships in NFL history with six, and whose fan base has already begun planning the team's Super Bowl Parade in downtown Boston? Or do we support the Eagles, who, for the second consecutive week, had a fan of the team get arrested for repeatedly punching a police horse? New England, whose team is just a few seasons removed from the Deflategate scandal in which Brady and the Patriots were accused of deliberately under-inflating footballs during their AFC Championship win over the Indianapolis Colts? Or Philadelphia, whose police department was forced to cover the city's light poles with Crisco in an attempt to prevent its fans from climbing the poles following the game."

You can read Citak's full piece here.

Dan Gelston of the Associated Press wrote this ode to the reputations of both fan bases: "Beware, Minneapolis. Eagles fans are coming to your city. And the Massholes are joining in on the Super Bowl bash. Patriots-Eagles is more than a 2005 Super Bowl rematch. It sticks two of the more maligned — and misunderstood — fanbases in the NFL within striking distance of each other at US Bank Stadium. It's time to line 'em up — the Santa Snowball Hurlers vs. the Deflategate Truthers in a fight for the checkered flag of most obnoxious fans."

Here's the complete story.

SBNation has a guide for how to deal with yet another Patriots' Super Bowl appearance and offers up this bit of wisdom: Watching the Patriots lose in the Super Bowl is always more satisfying than watching them lose in the Divisional Round. "Which New England playoff crashes do you remember more vividly? An early January loss to Rex Ryan's Jets or the epic February defeats at the hands of Tom Coughlin and the Giants? Patriots schadenfreude reaches its peak in February, even if it doesn't happen often. "Sad Tom Brady" doesn't become a meme at the AFC Championship — that's the kind of magic that only happens at the Super Bowl."

The full post is here.

And finally, Tom English writes for Phillyviews.com about what it's like to live in Philadelphia and hate the Eagles: "Have you ever had an argument with someone, knowing the other person is stubborn, thick-headed, and refuses to see any other side of the conversation except his or her own? No matter what you say, this person refuses to acknowledge any fact or reasoning behind what you bring to the table. Any normal conversation about the topic spirals out of control into a heated debate in which you just end up wanting to scream at the top of your lungs. Know anyone like that?"

There's more of his take here.