The Philadelphia I have known all my life has been a tough, demanding sports town. Sometimes too tough. We have been known to alienate some of our stars for nitpicking minutia, and taking successful players and coaches for granted. But it came from a good place, and in my opinion, an important place. The incessant desire to win and a demand for greatness. It puts pressure on ownership to not get complacent. Philly would always let their teams know when they weren't holding up their end of the bargain. Andy Reid and the Eagles made it to 4 straight NFC Championship Games, and one Super Bowl, but because they didn't win it all, the fans didn't take their foot off the pedal. They demanded better, even though most NFL fan bases would have killed to be in the position of the Eagles fans.
However, something has changed lately. I don't know if generations of sports fans have changed or there's something new added to Philly's water supply, but ever since the Eagles won the Super Bowl, Philly sports fans have gotten complacent. Maybe more saddening, is this city has lost their collective self-respect.
The Phillies haven't made the playoffs in a decade. Ten. Fucking. Years. And all it took was keeping the status quo by retaining JT Realmuto, Didi Gregorius, and adding a couple bullpen arms for the fans to get fat and satisfied. "This year is going to be different!" fans said. "I think under year two of Joe Girardi, they will find the groove and make the postseason!" Fans were dreaming playoffs and thinking big this season and ready to fill John Middleton's pockets with their cash, for as much as one can do during a pandemic. And what changed? Nothing, really. Fans were enthusiastic about a status quo that had already been proven over a 10 year period wasn't good enough. In years past, we would have never given a free pass to a team that hadn't won anything in a decade and made them prove to us they'd changed before buying in.
What happened to the demanding Philly sports fan that would call out their teams when they didn't do enough? This Phillies team's current playoff drought is approaching that of 1993-2007 in length and fans cut them more slack than they did Andy Reid's Eagles who made 4 NFC title games.
Now, the Eagles. Coming off one of the most boring, unwatchable, unexciting seasons, with the most bland and unimaginative offense you'll ever see, the Eagles were sitting pretty at pick 6 with the potential opportunity to draft two generational pass-catching offensive talents. Guys who would entertain this city for years, and make game days fun again. Instead, Howie Roseman decided to trade down to pick 12 to acquire more draft capital, as a trade-off for a lesser player. And fans ate it right up. Because of course they did. Since winning the Super Bowl, the Eagles can do no wrong. Howie Roseman can run the team into the ground, Jeff Lurie can meddle and make absurd excuses for Howie during zoom conferences, and the fans will still talk themselves into being excited over lesser players than they could've gotten at their original draft spot. Ja'Marr Chase or Kyle Pitts? Bah, it's cool, we can settle for a Jaylen Waddle fans say with a teethy grin, almost as if they smile large enough they may actually convince themselves they're legitimately excited.
Something similar is happening in the video game industry. I've played video games my whole life. In the last year of video games, any fellow gamer would know we've seen our fair share of broken games at launch. If you don't play video games, that doesn't mean it in the physical sense, it means that the games didn't work right at their initial release date. Full of bugs and glitches. Games crashing. They weren't released in proper working condition. But video game fans made excuses for the game developers. Because their allegiance to their favorite developers and publishers superseded their self-respect, and the right to have a working product that they paid for. And the reason this issue of broken games continues to happen is because fans continue to pay money to these companies over and over again so they have no incentive to improve their work. Stop giving them money and they'd get the message that this state of gaming is unacceptable.
We're seeing the same thing in Philly sports. The Phillies can give the fans a mediocre baseball team for the nth straight year, yet fans continue to shovel money into Middleton's pockets. The Eagles continue to let Howie Roseman screw things up, pass on elite talents to prove to the world how smart he is. And Fans continue to throw their money at Jeff Lurie like a kid at an arcade. All the while, no improvement is being made. They shuffle the deck chairs of the Titanic a few times now and again, but the end result remains roughly the same over the last few years. When are you going to put your foot down and say "Enough, I'm tired of being treated this way"? When are you going to feel like you deserve better and start demanding it again? The Dodgers and Padres, two elite teams already, are adding new high-level talents from outside their organizations, but Phillies fans are over the moon just keeping their own. Howie Roseman is now at the point where he's being openly mocked by the mainstream sports media, which hardly ever happens with general managers because relationships need to be maintained. Yet Howie stays on, despite a catastrophic 3 year stretch, and fans have relegated themselves into getting excited about lesser players in a draft, and signing middle tier free agents they had to settle for because it's all they could afford after years of destroying their salary cap.
This is one of the premiere sports towns in the country. A top 5 market. This isn't Little Rock fucking Arkansas. Get some fucking self-respect and stop giving these teams the light of day until they start doing what needs to be done. I never thought I'd long for the days of hearing fans trash Andy Reid after his first loss following a 6 game winning streak, but I do. At least those fans held their teams accountable when they needed to. You saw Josh Harris reverse course on a decision to cut employee salaries during a pandemic because of mere public pressure. You, the fan, has more power than you realize. Start using it. Get your dignity back, Philadelphia.
No comments:
Post a Comment