Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll

Massachusetts sports fans unaccustomed to seeing their teams struggle following 20 years of unprecedented success and 12 major sports championships since the turn of the century blame the field generals of the region’s two most popular teams for their respective falls from grace, according to a new statewide UMass Amherst / WCVB Poll.

Image

The survey of Massachusetts residents conducted Oct. 13-20 found that among those who expressed an opinion, a majority of respondents (51%) disapprove of the way Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick is doing his job and a plurality (48%) blame him for the team’s struggles since the departure of Tom Brady. Meanwhile, a plurality (42%) of fans also say manager Alex Cora is at fault for this season’s last-place finish in the AL East and losing record for the Red Sox.

“What have you done for me lately?” asks Tatishe Nteta, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the UMass Poll. “Since his arrival in 2000, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has created and sustained a legacy of excellence and success unrivaled in the history of the National Football League, if not professional sports. With nine Super Bowl appearances and a record six Super Bowl championships under his belt, many in New England have for decades loudly declared that ‘In Bill We Trust.’ In recent years as the team began to rebuild in the wake of the departure of quarterback Tom Brady, Belichick has come under criticism for weak drafts, poor free agent acquisitions, nepotism and questionable in-game coaching decisions. With this season’s team on pace for a losing season, Belichick is for the first time on the hot seat with some suggesting that this season may be his last in New England. If Belichick wants to continue as head coach, he will have to turn around the team from its current doldrums and last week’s win against AFC East rival, Buffalo, may be the first step.”

Nteta notes that the survey’s respondents used negative words such as “old,” “grumpy,” “retire,” “struggling” and “stubborn” to describe the 71-year-old and six-time Super Bowl Champion coach.

Meanwhile, looking 20 miles northeast to Fenway Park, Cora is taking the most heat from “Red Sox Nation” for the team’s back-to-back losing seasons, though it’s a close race with owner John Henry and Chaim Bloom, the team’s former chief baseball officer.

“A nation divided? Massachusetts residents are genuinely split on the question of who is to blame for the poor performance of the Red Sox last season,” says Adam Eichen, research fellow with the UMass Poll. “While a plurality (42%) of respondents who expressed an opinion blamed manager Alex Cora, former Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom and Red Sox principal owner John W. Henry also share perceived culpability, at 31% and 27%, respectively. Far more troubling for Henry, though, is the widespread perception that he is less committed to winning than the other major Boston sports team owners. Only 10% of respondents who expressed an opinion selected Henry as the Boston sports team owner most committed to winning championships. With a tantalizing offseason free agent class and plenty of potential trade targets, will Henry and new Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow make splashes to regain the trust of the Fenway faithful?”

“For an owner whose stewardship helped to break the Curse of Bambino and who is responsible for four championships in the last 20 years, this is indeed a fall from grace,” Nteta agrees. “But, in the past 23 years the city of Boston’s professional sports teams experienced a historic run with a combined 12 championships between the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox. With this high level of success comes heightened expectations that each season will result in a championship.”

Methodology

This University of Massachusetts Amherst / WCVB Poll of 700 respondents from Massachusetts was conducted by YouGov Oct. 13-20. YouGov interviewed 788 total respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 700 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative “modeled frame” of U.S. adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity years of education and home ownership status (own/rent/other). The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles. The weights were then post-stratified on 2020 presidential vote choice, home ownership status (3-categories), a two-way stratification of age (4-categories) and race (4-categories), as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories).

The margin of error within this poll is 5.1%.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll