I love Bandwagon fans. Let’s get that out there right away.
Bandwagon-ers are not to be looked down upon, sneered at or viewed as a lesser species of sports enthusiast. Don’t feel superior to someone with the guts to walk away. Applaud them. They’re a reason you’re enjoying fan life right now.
The line between loyalty and stupidity is so fine it can’t be measured. Sports exist to make us happy. When they conspire to cause us to smash our foreheads against the Man Cave wall, something needs to change.
Sports loyalty is a weird commodity we don’t apply to any other consumer product. If your favorite brand of, I dunno, sauerkraut suddenly stops pleasantly puckering the corners of your mouth, do you keep eating it? “I’ve been eating the same pucker-ing sauerkraut since my mom made me eat it when I was 6. I’m now 112. I’m too old to change.’’
Sauerkraut, Doc?
Maybe your first car was a ’64 VW Beetle, so you’re still driving Beetles, even as they’re no longer noted for reliability, if indeed they ever were. What’s your point? That you drive a mediocre car because you’re. . . loyal?
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The actual point is, companies wanting to sell you something, whether it’s Stay-Puft marshmallows or season tickets, are the folks who should be worried about your patronage, not vice versa. I recall when Carl Lindner owned the Reds, he said he’d consider spending more money on players if more people came to Reds games.
Nonsense. Cart before horse.
You are trying to sell me something. You are lucky that pro sports are largely monopolies. Unless I live in New York, Chicago or LA, I can’t go across town to watch the other club in town. I can’t switch teams the way I can switch baked-bean loyalties. I’m stuck. Or not. Not if I’m a Bandwagon-eer.
The onus was on King Carl to make me wanna come to games.
Which gets us back to Bandwagon-istas.
They force change.
One way to make team ownership pay attention is hit ‘em in the wallet. It’s usually the only way. Whether you stop going to games or stop buying your gas at UDF, jumping off the bandwagon hits them where they live.
Bandwagon-ites don’t tolerate.
Here’s part of an e-mail I got Tuesday from a Mobster. He was a diehard fan for the Bengals first 20-plus years:
Then came the ‘90s and the ‘00s. I tried to be a fan but they were so bad and it REALLY appeared the ownership didn’t care. Come on-who hires Dave Shula and keeps Marvin Lewis year after year? Since they didn’t care I stopped caring and joined my father as a Packer fan. Even bought a share of stock. More important I became an active bungle hater. Lots of posts and ridicule pointed at those fools who supported a team (and in some cases spent thousands of dollars a year) which didn’t care about them. We’ll…now they’re playing well, have likable players, and MAYBE ownership is turning a corner. I’m happy to see them do well and they are fun to watch and people are excited and…I’m in a moral quandary (a place I think many Cincinnatians are). Can I now support a team I laughed at for the better part of 20 years? Probably overthinking this but I keep seeing all these fans who say “I never lost faith.”
There’s a little bit o’ him in all youse.
I told him what I’m telling you. Be a proud Bandwagon-eer. The other guys are the ones who have it backwards. Loyalty isn’t bestowed. It’s earned. Trust is not a given.
Owners rely on “loyalty’’ even as they don’t return it. Owners depend on fealty and prey on a “marketplace’’ that doesn’t exist. Essentially, they run a supermarket that only stocks one item. And they’re the only supermarket in town.
Don’t fall for that. Hop on and off the sports-wagon as much as you like.
What say you?
Now, then. . .
I SPOKE MY PIECE yesterday re the HOF. Today, after Bonds and Clemens missed the cut for the 10th time, and thus will have to rely on the mercy of the oldtimers committees, the reaction is, essentially, “The Baseball Hall of Fame election process is a fraudulent mess.’’
You can agree and disagree with that at the same time, and not be wrong.
Agree: The rules of engagement are too vague. Voting is subject to personal biases, not cold, hard facts. A HOF without Bonds and Clemens isn’t a Hall of Fame.
Disagree: They cheated the game, allegedly, even as the rules prohibiting PEDs weren’t on the books. I have to add “allegedly’’ because the legal department likes that, but anyone with functioning brain cells likely will concur. They never admitted they skirted the laws of fair play. They certainly didn’t apologize for it.
Unless you’re OK with chaos, rules matter. Even the unwritten ones. To reward those who don’t care about that is to encourage it to continue.
A solution: The building in upstate New York is called the Hall of Fame and Museum. There’s a reason for that. Put miscreants in the Museum, not in the Hall. Half of Pete Rose’s game-worn stuff is already on display there anyway. Honor the player, punish the gambler/juicer.
GREEN GRASS AND ALL THAT. . . Chris Mack and Louisville are parting ways, after three-plus years. Mack entered a bad situation and didn’t make it better. In fact, he made it a little worse, thanks to the rat Dino Gaudio, who tried to extort Mack after Mack fired him.
The ‘Ville’s basketball program still exists in the shadow of Slick Rick’s era, marked by lots of wins, and strippers in the basketball dorm. Mack couldn’t escape that and his more deliberate style of play didn’t work at a place where basketball is played at the same pace as the horse races down the road.
No one should fault Mack for leaving Xavier after nine highly successful seasons. Ville paid him a bunch more money and, theoretically, offered him a better chance for One Shining Moment.
But X is a great example of green grass on this side of the fence. How many coaches who left the XU cocoon went on to bigger and better? Thad Matta, maybe, but not for long. Sean Miller? Nope. Skip and Pete? No and no. And now Mack. He’ll get another job. Will it be as good as the one he left four seasons ago?
MAHOMES MECHANICS STINK. . . ESPN draft guru Todd McShay, on the way Patrick Mahomes throws the ball:
“I've been scouting quarterbacks for the NFL draft since 1999, and I've never seen such tremendous results on a consistent basis for a quarterback with such messy mechanics.
Until Mahomes came along, I'd say about 90% of what I was looking for on a QB's tape was what happened before the ball left his hand, and I was pretty rigid on that. Proper footwork in the pocket. Clean drops from center. Stepping to and through the target. Driving hips and following-through. Typically an over-the-top delivery. Successful NFL quarterbacks were the ones who threw from a solid base, married their eyes to their feet and pulled the trigger on throws with a clean release. misses entirely on too many open targets because his mechanics are all over the place.’’
Mahomes is an outlier. If he weren’t, noted QB whisperer Jordan Palmer would be out of work, not highly successful at making good quarterbacks better. See: Burrow, Joe and Ridder, Desmond.
I USED TO ENJOY COVERING THE OLYMPICS. Now, I’d rather whack my temples with a ball peen hammer. You wanna go to China, where they’re locking down everyone who even looks like they have Omicron?
From Yahoo!:
The knock came in the middle of the night, a pounding on the door that awakened an NBC Sports employee who had triggered COVID protocols in Beijing.
Once the hotel room door opened, the employee was immediately taken by hazmat-wearing officials to a dedicated vehicle which whisked them away to a so-called “isolation center.” The employee’s new home, where they would have to wait and test their way out of, was dubbed by one source as “a one-star Chinese hotel.”
Everyone entering the “closed loop” of the Beijing Olympics must pass a battery of tests to get in, and must keep passing them every day they’re in the country. One confirmed positive, regardless of symptoms — or even, potentially, a close contact with someone who tests positive — and it’s off to an isolation facility.
The isolation centers, which will host those who trigger the protocols, are, even by the Beijing 2022 Playbook’s description, somewhere between drab and concerning. They must be approximately 25 square meters — about 269 square feet, a little smaller than an average hotel room — in size, have a window that can provide “access to fresh air,” and feature wifi, although the level of restrictions on wifi is left unsaid. Anyone stuck in one will get served three meals a day and access to “mental health support,” but “will not be allowed to go outside.” Athletes can get training equipment, “if available.”
To be released from an isolation center, an isolated individual who tested positive can be released after 10 days of isolation provided they are asymptomatic and pass PCR tests for three straight days.
I’ve seen the movie Midnight Express. This reminds me of that.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . This one’s been knocking around my head this AM. From a highly underrated, late-era Band album called Islands, perhaps best known for a very cool cover.
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