Written by: Ray Hagan (@rayhagan19)
I attended an Arena Football game tonight. I am a proud Philadelphia Soul season
ticket holder.
After hearing national attention once again being brought to Philadelphia fans in a
negative light, I got to witness what makes Philly fans so great.
An official at
the game found themselves sandwiched between a Mustang player, Soul player, and the
boards.
The official, a female, was left hunched over the boards clearly in pain. Once she
had recovered, the fans stood and cheered that she was ok. There wasn't a single
"that's why girls shouldn't be on the football field" comment within earshot of me.
No boos for slowing down the game. The fans let out "oohs" of genuine concern
seeing the replay, and thunderous applause upon seeing that she was ok.
I, like every other Philadelphia fan with a beating heart and functional brain, once
again found myself disgusted with my fellow less-than-insightful fans during Game 3
of the Sixers/Bulls series. If you are unaware of what happened, Sixers fans
cheered at an ankle injury to Joakim Noah.
Noah is one of the NBA's great agitators; he is vilified by most fanbases outside of
Chicago for his constantly running mouth and aggressive play.
He does not, however, deserve the treatment that was showered upon him by the Sixers
faithful on Saturday night.
The Philadelphia fans that care about how those actions affect our reputation are
not the ones who would boo Noah, and sadly, the ones who did boo have no care for
how we are perceived.
Many of the moments that the national media like to use to tout how bad the
Philadelphia fanbase is are simply not covered accurately.
For instance, national media outlets love to bring up how "the Philly fans" booed
Donovan McNabb when he was drafted. As an actual Philadelphia fan, I can tell you
that's the furthest thing from the truth. The actual scenario is that a local
Philadelphia radio host, who desperately wanted the Eagles to select Ricky Williams
(which would have been horrendous in retrospect), selected 30 of the most drunken
and offensive fans he could find in a radio contest to take a bus trip and boo
McNabb. 31 idiots with an agenda doesn't represent a fanbase.
They also love bringing up a Flyers fan going after Tie Domi after Domi squirted him
with a water bottle. Does anyone consider the Detroit fanbase awful for the Artest
melee? No, they blame the player for instigating a horrific incident. Domi
instigated that situation as well.
Another favorite incident is a man at a Phillies game intentionally vomiting on the
11 year old daughter of an off duty cop. That was a terrible situation for sure,
unfortunate last I checked, that man was from New Jersey, not Philadelphia. If a
Philly fan ventured to, for instance, Boston, and did the same at Fenway, it
wouldn't be an example of Boston fans being awful. As a matter of fact the national
media would be sure to point out it was another reckless Philadelphia fan on the
prowl. Surely someone not from Philly coming into our ballpark can't be held
against us.
Fans in general have ugly incidents. There's Montreal fans cheering Zdeno Chara's
injury, and let's not forget Cleveland fans throwing beers during 10 cent beer night
causing an Indians forfeit. How about Twins fans throwing hot dogs at former Twins-great-turned-New-York-Yankee Chuck Knoblauch? Do we need to be reminded of the
recent incident of a San Francisco Giants fan beaten to the point of brain damage by
Dodgers fans? Or the time the Dodgers forfeit a game because their fans wouldn't
stop throwing souvenir baseballs on the field? Not every Cleveland, Los Angeles, or
Minnesota fan is an idiot like the ones responsible for those incidents. Just like
not every Philadelphia fan is an idiot like those who cheered Noah's injury.
My point here isn't to excuse the classless nature of the incident at the Sixers
game. As a Philadelphia fan, as a sports fan, I'm disgusted by what happened there.
The point here is to realize that all fanbases have idiots in them. There's not a
professional team in existence that doesn't have some unruly fans. It's the nature
of the beast.
What irks me is that the national media doesn't seem to define other cities by ugly
fan incidents the way they do Philadelphia. I don't have the platform to defend
myself and similar likeminded Philadelphia fans the way that certain pundits do to
tear us down. I am willing to use this small piece of the internet to try sway even
one person into understanding that Philly fans shouldn't be defined by our worst
fans anymore than a family should be defined by its worst members.
If you're a proud sports fan in any city, you should stand up and applaud yourself.
You should also recognize that most of us in Philadelphia are just like you. We're
proud, we bleed our teams' colors. We boo the opponents and we cheer for our boys.
We also recognize and shake our heads when our fans do something stupid like the
Sixers fans did with Noah. I'm sure you do the same when your fans do something
dumb. Don't let the national media fool you into believing that Philly fans are all
bloodthirsty psychos without a conscience.
Instead of letting those fans that threw snowballs at Santa, booed McNabb and
cheered the injuries to Michael Irvin and Joakim Noah be the face of the
Philadelphia fan...I'd like to nominate myself and the thousands of other fans like
me to be the face of Philadelphia sports.
Perception is reality, and starting with this writing, I hope I've changed at least
one perception of what a Philadelphia fan is.
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