Way back in the day: Ye olde New England vs NY

ALBANY, N.Y. — Think this New York vs. New England thing is a product of the modern sports era? Prithee, fuggedaboudit.

"It doesn't quite go back to the glaciers, but it's close," said William Fowler, author and history professor at Northeastern University in Boston.

The regional rivalry long predates the Super Bowl matchup, Giants vs. Patriots, or baseball's Yankees vs. Red Sox. New York and its neighbors to the east have bad blood stretching all the way back to Colonial America, when New England militiamen viewed "Yorkers" as blasphemous, profane drunks, while their counterparts next door considered the men of the Massachusetts Bay colony to be Puritan-raised prudes who didn't know how to have a good time, even going so far as to ban Christmas in Boston during a 22-year period in in the 1600s.

"New Englanders, even by middle of the 18th century, are so strictly religious that you find them picking fights for cursing in military camps and ganging up on people and beating them up for not following the Sabbath. That certainly didn't help relations," said Stuart Lilie, director of interpretation at upstate New York's Fort Ticonderoga, near the Vermont state line....