E-Mail This Article to a Friend PATRIOT GAMES Sean Glennon’s year among the Foxborough faithful BY MIKE MILIARD

Sean Glennon isn’t even really a Pats fan. Sure, he grew up in Milford and lives now in Western Massachusetts. But he’s always been a Raiders guy. Partly this is because of Milford homeboy, Raiders defensive end, and Hall of Famer Howie Long. But in large part, Glennon says, it’s because " I grew up with horrible Patriots teams. I always liked the Patriots, and I always wanted the Patriots to win. But during the ’70s and ’80s you could never expect the Patriots to win. A lot of the time you couldn’t even hope for them to win. " He just didn’t need the heartache.

Of course, that’s all changed now. The Pats are reigning Super Bowl champs, and only just recently snapped the longest winning streak in NFL history. But it was before all that glory, during the legendary " Snow Bowl " divisional playoff between the Pats and the Raiders on January 19, 2002, that Glennon started thinking hard about what motivates his friends, die-hard Pats fans all. " When it looked like the Raiders were gonna win, I had these guys telling me, ‘All right, Sean, that’s it, get outta here. The Raiders are gonna win. Fuck you.’ And, of course, things turned around, and a few minutes later the same people were taunting me, coming off like they knew the Pats were gonna win all along. I just got to thinking that I’d been through a lifetime of that with Pats fans — always looking for the worst, until it’s clear that things aren’t gonna go badly. "

Glennon’s new book, This Pats Year: A Trek Through a Season As a Football Fan (Taylor Trade) — which first took shape two years ago as a 14-week series of essays in these pages — is a funny and enlightening sociological study, a plumbing of the psyche of the New England sports fan. For a dozen Sunday afternoons and two Monday nights over the course of the Patriots’ 2002 season, Glennon immersed himself in the red-white-and-blue-clad faithful. In the snowy seats of Gillette Stadium, in a bar just down the road, in a dorm room at UMass Dartmouth, in the TV showroom at the Natick Mall Sears, or in a Manhattan watering hole, commingling with expat Pats fans in a sea of Jets green, Glennon was an observer in the field.

The characters he met come to life through his funny, conversational voice. There’s Dave, the superstitious fan who thinks Glennon’s mere presence at the game is a jinx. There’s Gainer, the hapless gambler who places tease bets on his own team. There’s " the anti-Olbermann, " a fat, homophobic loudmouth at Chili’s, in Framingham, who pontificates vociferously about every play as if he were in his own ESPN studio.

Glennon says his status as a semi-fan gave him a leg up in a way, affording him the vantage point of a disinterested observer. " I’ve always wanted the Patriots to win, " he says. " I’ve always been excited when they win. All my friends are Patriots fans. You can’t not get excited when the Pats do well. But I had that sorta half a step back. My emotions weren’t tied to the Pats in any way, so I think I had a better perspective on the team, which allowed me to just concentrate on the fans. "

He also happened to pick a unique season in the Pats’ history: their first as reigning champs, and their first in their mammoth, state-of-the-art new stadium. But while the team’s 2001 and 2003 campaigns both culminated in Super Bowl wins, the 2002 season ended with a good-but-not-great 9-7 record. " Journalistically and artistically, I’m extremely happy [to have picked that season], " Glennon says. " I don’t think last year would have done me any good, because I wouldn’t have gotten the full range of emotions. I wanted to catch fans during a typical season. In a typical season you don’t win the Super Bowl. But cynically, from a business perspective, yeah, I wish I’d written about last season. I would’ve sold three times as many books! "

So what lessons did Glennon take away from his research? " My philosophy had always been, why do I need to support the group of mercenaries down the street? I never really understood why it was important to celebrate the home team, " he says. " I understand now that it has nothing to do with the group of mercenaries down the street. It has to do with the guy next door and the guy who works at the next desk and the people who are a row ahead of you at the game or on the next stool at the bar. It’s something that brings you all together when most of the time you have nothing in common. It’s really important for people to have that sense of community. "

Sean Glennon will be signing copies of This Pats Year this Saturday, November 13, at Barnes & Noble, in East Walpole, and Sunday, November 14, at Borders, in Braintree.