The Devil IS in South Jersey

Eight years ago, I thought I had found the promised land.  After one year of marriage and two long years of searching for homes in Passaic County, we had given up.  We thought that a nice affordable home was a hopeless case.  We were outbid, defeated, and broken by our poor budget, termites, radon, you name it.  I know!-- we'll move to another market....and so we considered the Philadelphia suburbs.  I did not know much about this area, but assumed that it was like NYC suburbs, just on a smaller scale.  Boy was I a fool!  We started looking at homes in the Cherry Hill area and immediately fell in love with the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods, over-abundance of all of the comforts we enjoyed up north, and oh yeah....those affordable prices!  After finding our "dream" starter home, we thought the price was too good to be true.  Like fools, we overpaid, but got a steal by North Jersey market standards.  And so it began...
It didn't take long to realize that our love of our new idyllic hometown and area had one major flaw.....the sports.  I had always known that Philadelphia was a big sports town and I knew some of the folklore about their fans, but I/we never really anticipated all of the hatred and scorn that came along with moving from North Jersey.  The accents were funny, but Sundays in the fall, not so much!  Before long, we experienced some strange looks, comments, and odd occurrences at our home.  Perhaps it was the "Giants suck" comment thrown in my pregnant wife's face at the Cherry Hill mall (for the record, I am a Jets fan), the bitter comments thrown by a ravenous Eagles fan in her 60s, the brainwashing handed down from the local media daily, or just the lack of pride in anything New Jersey.  Eight years later, we question our move here.
As a Devils/Jets fan, things are not always easy.  Though the Jets association does not invite much backlash, certainly my wife's Giants association does.  The Devils are another sad story.  My fellow locals REALLY believe they are not living in New Jersey.  The love Philadelphia like it is some golden utopia, they worship their Philly friends who in turn, do nothing but put them down, and they fall in line and for the sake of being accepted and loved, tow the Philly sports line.  Yes, this is life in South Jersey, PA, or so they wish.
This blog is meant to document and hopefully laugh about some of my experiences here, as a stranger in a strange land.  The people are nice as long as you don't mention your sports allegiances.  Well, that is a major problem.  So here we go.... Perhaps there are more of you out there.  Let's hope...
In many ways, I am the Devil in South Jersey.