The professional american football team, the New England Patriots, was founded in Boston. Initially with the name of Boston Patriots in 1959 as a member of the American Football League (AFl) that later in 1970 joined with the national football league (NFL), with William H. Sullivan Jr. as the owner of the franchise. In 1971 the Patriots change their team name for New England Patriots when they returned to Foxborough, Massachusetts, after being in 4 different stadiums in their first 11 seasons.
The american football team ”The Patriots” currently belongs to the American Football Conference (AFC) east division in the NFL.
A little history
The New England Patriots played their first game in September 9th 1960 against the Denvers Broncos, losing 13-10 in the regular-season of the AFL. The Patriots did not attain the playoffs in the 3 first seasons, but in 1963 the team won its first AFL championship against the San Diego Chargers.
Difficult times
After the loss of $100 million in the franchise in the mid-80´s, the Suliman family were forced to sell the team for 84 million dollars. Later in the 90’s, after the lamentable 1-5 result at the end of the season, the Patriots were involved in a scandalous sexual harassment case of Lisa Olson, who was sexual and verbally harassed by some of the team’s players.
Triumphs
Conference championships
The Patriots have won the AFC Championship several times. These are the years that the american football team have won:
1985 – 1996 – 2001 – 2003 – 2004 – 2007 – 2011
Super Bowl
3 Super Bowls won.
In 2002 after the arrival of Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots won their first Super Bowl. Later in 2004 and 2005 the Patriots won again, thing that had only been achieved by the Dallas Cowboys in 1992-1995. An outstanding fact, since only two teams have won 3 times in a 4 year period, and this was the eigth team to win the NFL in a consecutive manner.
Super Bowl XXXVI – Patriots VS St Louis Rams
The Team
Coach: Bill Belichick
Offensive captains: Tom Brady, Dan Connolly
Defensive captains: Vince Wilfork, Devin McCourty
Special Team Captain: Matthew Slater
Gillet Stadium
This is the Gillet Stadium, located in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Owned by Robert Kraft, it costed $325 millions.
The Patriots stadium has a capacity of 68.756 viewers and a synthetic surface since 2006.
Logo and the uniforms
These are the uniforms and the New England Patriots logo, this second has suffered several changes through time since 1960, the last one was in 2000.
The Pat Patriots logo, after being the minuteman designed by Phil Bissell, has now the shape of the flying Elvis logo as shown in the image.
Content Usage:
Photos and videos featured on this post are used under a creative commons license, free to use and edit – Wikipedia Commons www.commons.wikimedia.org and Youtube permission to feature under its TOS.