While most football fans in Maine will have their eyes glued to their television screens Sunday night to watch the New England Patriots play the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI, one notable Mainer, Gov. Paul LePage, said he won’t be watching.

LePage, who has previously said he’s no fan of the New England Patriots, repeated Thursday during his weekly radio appearance with WGAN’s Matt Gangon and Ken Altshuler that he doesn’t like Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft or some of the team’s management decisions.

“I don’t like to watch the Patriots,” LePage said. “There’s a couple of reasons of why I can’t root for the Patriots and it has nothing to do with the people on the football field.”

LePage gave a couple of reasons why he didn’t support one of New England’s most beloved sports teams, including a business controversy involving Kraft and the state of Connecticut in the late 1990s, when it appeared Kraft would move the team to Hartford and then backed out, as well as the team’s involvement with tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder in 2015.

“I think Tom Brady is one of the most fantastic quarterbacks that’s ever going to play the game,” LePage said.

He also said he liked the team’s coach Bill Belichick. “Probably bar none, I think he’s the best coach in football,” LePage said.

But LePage faults Kraft for his business dealings. “His ethics of business are well beyond mine and I just can’t accept it,” LePage said. “And I can’t accept the fact that they took Hernandez knowing the problem that he had. We knew he was a bad guy from the get-go but they still took him on. They knew he was just a moving time bomb.”


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.