Bad sports, good sports: Pundits have to be disappointed that the Philadelphia fans cheered McNabb
Sunday, Donovan McNabb returned to Philadelphia. If you are a football fan, you are well aware of this, as it has been the main point of discussion on sports shows all week. The new quarterback of the Washington Redskins was making his first visit to the city where he had played for eleven seasons, and the sports world was fascinated. The big question was whether or not the Philadelphia fans, a popular target for derision by commentators everywhere, would boo McNabb.
As I knew they would, the fans gave McNabb a standing ovation when he was announced before the game. There may have been a lot of legitimate reasons for the fans’ difficult relationship with the quarterback, but he is a good man and a warrior as a football player, and the fans recognize and respect that he gave his all for them for so long. The thing that disgusted me was how quickly the Fox announcers doing the game attempted to twist the fan reaction to something negative. Within minutes of the standing ovation, McNabb took the field to start the Redskins’ first drive. The fans booed. Joe Buck, the Fox play-by-play announcer, criticized the fans for turning so quickly. I found this ridiculous and offensive. Regardless of Buck’s sense of appropriateness, this is football. The other team was coming onto the field to play. Is it really wrong to boo the other team? Sure, I know there are people who think booing is always wrong. In my opinion, those people are not real sports fans. It is not only okay to boo the other team, it is incumbent upon you to do so as a fan. What, were the fans supposed to continue to cheer McNabb throughout the game? The applause during introductions was to show respect. Cheering for him during the game would have been flat-out disrespectful to the Eagles. Whether he asked for it or not, McNabb is now the quarterback of a division rival. Once the game began, he was just another opponent.
The Fox broadcast trotted out the tired old video of the handful of idiots at the NFL Draft all those years ago, booing the selection of McNabb. They followed it with a replay of the ovation he received at the beginning of the game. I guarantee you that the booing video will continue to get plenty of airplay, long after the standing ovation has been forgotten. After all, it’s just not as fun a story. There has been so much sloppy, lazy journalism surrounding this event. The idea that the national sports media felt it was appropriate to proactively lecture the fans of Philadelphia on how to behave at the game is absurd. Many former-players-turned-announcers, including Trent Dilfer and Marcellus Wiley, were thoroughly convinced that those awful Philly fans were sure to boo the mere mention of McNabb’s name, and waxed poetic on how wrong that would be. The issue here is not the sentiment, with which I actually agree, but more the fact that these non-Philadelphia fans would presume to tell Philadelphia fans what they should feel. These guys didn’t spend eleven years dealing with the challenges of being a fan of Donovan McNabb. I won’t detail them here, but Donovan never made it easy for us to love him. His regular embracing of the victim role just never resonated with the demanding fans here. So, as many times as we have heard that number 5 took us to five NFC Championship games, we can state that the team lost four of those games, despite being heavily favored in three of them. For years, it was good enough to just be very good every year, knowing we had a shot. Eventually, it was time to start over with someone else. This is not a crime, and the Eagles fans were not wrong to have gotten to that point.
I hope all of the national idiots got a good look at that standing ovation and the booing that followed once the game started. All at once, it told them they were not only wrong, but it also told them to mind their own business. Yes, I wish the Eagles had won the game (they didn’t), but the message was sent loud and clear.
Bad sports, continued:
2) This was a bad week for football coaches. Chuck Cecil, defensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans, flipped off the referees after a call he disagreed with, while William Miller, a high school assistant coach, did him one better by mooning the fans of the opposing team. Cecil will keep his job. Miller did not.
3) Alberto Contador, the winner of this year’s Tour De France, has been suspended due to having failed a drug test during the Tour. As cycling seems to be rife with doping, there is no great surprise here. There is a fun part to the story, though. Contador is blaming his failed test on tainted meat. I wonder if Floyd Landis made him dinner.
4) Flamboyant wide receiver Chad Ochocinco, who plays for the Cincinnati Bengals, has a cereal named after him: Ochocinco’s. Ordinarily, I would just enjoy the fact that a professionally made product contains bad punctuation in the name (I love misused apostrophes), but the product’s packaging contained something even worse. A charity called Feed the Children is listed on the box, as it is supported by sales of the cereal, but be careful if you dial the listed number, as the phone sex line you are calling is unlikely to be sending food to underprivileged kids.
5) Jacksonville Jaguars receiver Kasim Osgood definitely had the most interesting injury of the week. He injured his wrist jumping from an upstairs window at the home of his 19-year-old girlfriend when her ex-boyfriend broke in with a gun and shooting ensued. You know there has to be more to this story, and it has to be good.
6) With time running out in the game, the 12th-ranked LSU Tigers thought they had lost to the unranked Tennessee Volunteers. They had just wasted about 25 seconds, and the desperation final snap to Jordan Jefferson had eluded his grasp. Time ran out, and the Vols celebrated. Hold on, though. The Vols had not eleven, not twelve, but thirteen men on the field. That’s a no-no. LSU got to run another play, and they scored the winning touchdown on the gift play.
Bonus – Have you ever seen a batted ball go through the legs of two different players on the same play? Now you have.
Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday.
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Great call on the ovation for McNabb, though still have my doubts about the argument that seems to go, “We Eagle fans are sick of the pain of losing NFC Championship games; we wish to experience the joys of coming nowhere near the NFC Championship game.”
Because man, both these teams looked terrible (particularly horrifying: the thought of Kolb playing against a team with an actual pass rush on a day his fumbles aren’t recovered and some likely interceptions aren’t dropped — when the ball’s bouncing your way and you still can’t do anything, uh-oh).
Also, do you think somewhere people are calling a sex line and are surprised to discover they’re contributing to a children’s charity?
Thanks for the comments, Sean. I am willing to watch the Eagles take their lumps with Kolb. This season was supposed to be about breaking in a new QB…learning…it was not going to be a playoff year, and doesn’t need to be.