Hey, Fans: Players Don't Care as Much as You

For all the Patriots fans out there still crying in the beer and assuming their favorite players are doing the same, sportswriter Bill Plaschke has a "dirty little secret" to reveal: "The players don't care as much as you do," he writes in the Los Angeles Times. Sure there are exceptions, but for the most part, the game is just a job to them. And he's not just talking about the Patriots here.

"In my 30 years of covering professional sports, I've found barely a handful of players who care as much about winning as the most fervent of fans," he writes. That's why a video of Patriots Rob Gronkowski and Matt Light partying after the Super Bowl loss made New England fans sick, but didn't surprise Plaschke a bit: Pro athletes "like winning and dislike losing but are generally unaffected by the daily successes or failures of their company, and really, what right do we have to demand otherwise?"