A recent poll confirmed what we all largely knew: New England sports fans love their New England Patriots and they really love their Tom Brady.
This was confirmed by a survey conducted by Channel Media & Market Research that allowed fans from the New England region to grade their professional sports teams, with the results first appearing in the Boston Herald.
The Patriots were selected as the favorite team, garnering 42 percent of those polled, while Brady was named the favorite player on the team. The Boston Red Sox earned the No. 2 spot (30 percent) with the Boston Bruins taking third (21 percent), the Boston Celtics following (6 percent) and the New England Revolution bringing up the rear (1 percent).
“I’m always impressed with how smart the fans are about their teams,” Sue Monahan of Channel Media & Market Research in Sudbury told the Herald. “They have very strong opinions and they expect the teams to be competing every year. They won’t let ownership get away with it if they don’t.”
Bruins center and fan favorite Patrice Bergeron was unsurprisingly named the team’s most popular player while Dustin Pedroia earned the honor for the Red Sox.
Sox fans also got their wish, as 14 percent of fans named Cuban outfielder Rusney Castillo as the player they most wanted to see in a Boston uniform — before he officially signed with the team — putting him just four percentage points behind leader Giancarlo Stanton.
NESN’s Don Orsillo also topped the polls, as the Red Sox announcer was named one of the most popular sports media figures. Tom Caron, also of NESN, led the poll of top local TV sports personality.
The survey was conducted between Aug.12-Aug. 24, with 40 percent of the voters hailing from Massachusetts. The rest of the respondents were from New England states, and 75 percent of the fans were male.
