I'm not sure what it means, but I can't shut up about them.

I don't know if it means I hate or love them, but apparently, the New England Patriots are the best team of all time. Perhaps, you've heard.

According to our sensationalist media, this Pat's squad makes the historic team of Bert and Ernie look like T.O. and Donovan McNabb, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert like Carlos Mencia and someone else not funny.

Right now, they're 9-0, and you'd be hard pressed to find a football fan (outside of Pittsburgh) who thinks they won't join the 1972 Miami Dolphins and become the second team in NFL history to finish a regular season undefeated. It's pretty likely they'll also lock up their fourth ring in six years, one short of the NFL record and the ability to summon Captain Planet.

Everyone wants to know when the Patriots will lose. Me? I have no idea. I'm more concerned with another certain infamous NFL record that might get matched this year. This year's Dolphins are on pace, at 0-9, to be the first franchise to go winless in a season since the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Please let it happen.

Why? Why else? It's hilarious.

Sports history is littered with teams that are embarrassingly awful. So painful to watch that fans have actually hung their heads in shame beneath a shroud of paper bag.

Some franchises have had their strings of bad luck: Those lovable losers on Chicago's north side, the Cubbies. The New Orleans "Aints" of the past. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays of always. Even the Pirates, winners of five World Series titles, have seen a decade and a half of impotence.

But there are some teams that are just so bad, so horrendously underachieving, that they earn a place in history.

In the late '70s and early '80s, the Northwestern Wildcats football team set a Division 1-A record, losing 34 straight games. In their winless 1981 campaign, they actually lost every game by an average of more than 40 points. The best part of it all though? Wildcat fans actually tore down the goalposts after a 61-14 loss to Michigan State.

There have been some bad teams in the intrepid history of Major League Baseball, but none as anemic as the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. That year, there were a dozen teams in the National League. The Spiders finished 12th, 34 games out of 11th place, losing 40 of their last 41. Of course, that tends to happen when your team is one of two owned by Frank De Hauss, who traded all his good players to St. Louis, leaving Cleveland with a roster resembling that of the Lifetime Channel's company softball team.

Of course, the most infamous team in professional sports history is the aforementioned '76 Buccaneers. Granted, it was the team's first NFL season, but no one could have predicted 0-14, losing each game by an average of more than 20 points. In fact, the team lost its first 12 games of the following season before recording the first franchise victory. When the team's flight arrived home in Tampa following the win, nearly 8,000 people lined the terminal to congratulate the conquering heroes.

There were excuses, as some claimed it was impossible to win with so many injuries, but even team member Pat Toomay laughed at that, saying injuries only made it "impossible to tell how untalented we were."

The '07 Dolphins are more than halfway to their inversely perfect season and a spot in the sports hall of lame. They also just announced that they're starting rookie quarterback John Beck, the former starting running back Ronnie Brown is out for the year, and free agent acquisition Joey Porter's mouth finally has a foot in it.

So, this year?

Put your money on mediocrity. If they win and the hilarity dies? I guess we've still got Mencia.

I know . . . pray they don't.

Ryan Smith is a senior majoring in journalism and is a Daily Collegian columnist. His e-mail is rss5007@psu.edu.