We are all fans. Every one of us has something or someone-a sports team, a rock band, a movie star-we care about more deeply than we probably should. And we all engage in some fan behavior, whether it's as simple as keeping up with that rock band's career through the media, or as involved as following our favorite team to away games, dressing in team gear and hitching our own well being to the team's fortunes on the field. But why? What does being a fan mean to us? What does it do for us? This Pats Year answers those questions by taking a look at fans in action. The author, a native New Englander and lifelong football fan, spent game days with fans of the New England Patriots during the team's 2002 post-championship season. He recalls four months of Sundays in self-contained narratives that come together to create a vivid picture of not just the Patriots faithful but of fans everywhere. The game-day essays present Patriots fans at their best and their worst, showing them as quixotic and mercurial, proud and steadfast, nervous and glum, jovial and celebratory. And the epilogue to this passionate book is the author's exploration of how the Patriots' 2003 season-one that made them Super Bowl contenders-caught its fans by surprise, putting them through a series of wildly varying emotions that seemed to bring them full circle from 2001. This Pats Year offers a fun and engaging look at what it is to be a fan-and does so in a manner that does not require a fan's involvement with the Patriots, football, or sports in general.
Sean Glennon lives in Florence, Massachusetts, a beautiful village within the City of Northampton, the only shortcoming of which is that it is entirely too far from Foxborough. In addition to his work as an author and football historian, Sean is a freelance journalist whose work focuses on music and sports and has appeared in such journals as The Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, and Salon. Sean has also written about books, sequential art, television and pop culture. Sean serves as creative director at Darby O'Brien Advertising, a firm located in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Sean is a member of the Professional Football Researchers Association and the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston.
Sean grew up in Milford, Massachusetts, which is considerably closer to Foxborough than is Florence. He holds a BA in English from Worcester State College (which as of July 2010 is called Worcester State University, though Sean's not going along with that, partly because that's not what it was when he was there and mostly because it makes no sense).
Sean can be found on line at seanglennon.com
