Philadelphia Sports Curse

If you’ve read the previous posts which detail the futility of each sports franchise in this cursed city, you must be wondering, “How can the fans stand it? What effect must all this losing have on them?”

Well, to put it mildly, it has not been pretty.  The fans are very passionate.  Above all we admire effort, Rocky-Balboa style.  We LOVE players like Allen Iverson who give 100% in every game and play through injuries.  Incidentally, Iverson has now publicly demanded a trade and likely has played his final game as a Sixer.  Typical.

We HATE players like Terrell Owens who put themselves above the team.  We HATE players like Ricky Waters, who once intentionally let a few passes fall incomplete at the end of a game to avoid being hit.  When asked why he didn’t catch the passes, Ricky famously said, “For who? For what?”

How about for US, ass hole, the fans who paid $80 per ticket to come and watch you?
And so after all these years of frustration and losing and horrible trades and Derrick Coleman and Heath Sherman and blowing a 3-1 lead to the Devils and 10,000 fucking losses and that dufus Shawn Bradley and trading away Charles Barkley for nothing and actually allowing Rich Kotite to coach your team and hiring Charlie Manuel instead of Jim Leyland and Smarty Jones losing the Triple Crown to a 36-1 longshot from New York, of all places, what kind of fans are we?

The worst in professional sports.  We have a long history of being horrible.  In a famous incident in 1968, fans vociferously booed and threw snowballs…. at Santa Claus.  In the 1989 “Bounty Bowl II” game in which snowballs were launched relentlessly at the opposing team and coaches, none other than FUTURE GOVERNOR of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, paid another fan $20 to pelt Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson in the head with a snowball.

In 1997 during a Monday Night Football game against the 49ers, fans engaged in a number of highly visible, large-scale brawls which were broadcast on national television.  One fan fired a flare gun into seats across the stadium.  This led to the creation of a magistrate’s office and holding cell IN THE STADIUM.

In 1998, radio station WIP organized for a group of fans to travel to the NFL Draft SPECIFICALLY TO BOO the Eagles pick, Donovan McNabb (who went on to become one of the greatest players in franchise history).  Their fury was based on their belief that the team should draft Ricky Williams, whose career has been a gigantic disappointment highlighted by several violations of the league’s substance abuse policy.

In 1999, star receiver Michael Irvin of the hated Dallas Cowboys suffered a career-ending broken neck which knocked him unconscious.  As he lay prostrate and immobile on the turf, with his life in danger, Eagles fans CHEERED.  They even chanted “Emmitt’s next,” referring to Cowboys star running back Emmitt Smith.

It has gotten to the point where the fans’ collective negativity is actually hurting the teams’ ability to win.  Free agents do not wish to play in a city where every move will be so harshly scrutinized.  Talented managers and coaches know that the fans’ unforgiving nature will expose them to pressure rarely seen elsewhere.  And players on our teams know that a streak of poor performances can trigger a chorus of the sound for which Philly fans are so famous:

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!