This will be my most unpopular blog ever. As a life-long St. Louisian and a die hard sports fan I have to say that football season brings out the WORST in the St. Louis sports fans. The notion that St. Louis is a ‘great sports town’ is totally false and needs to be addressed.
St. Louis IS a great baseball town, but the Rams’ era has proven once again that we are fickle when it comes to everything else. For the third consecutive home game the Rams faced a good opponent that had thousands of fans in the stands. Again on Sunday, there were thousands of Peyton Manning, Reggie Wayne and Bob Sanders jerseys. When would there be more Manny Ramirez jerseys at Busch Stadium than those of Albert Pujols?
When the teams ran on the field, the cheers for the Indianapolis Colts than for the ST. LOUIS RAMS. How is that possible? I have no attacks for the fans that don’t show up nor for those that don’t bother to buy tickets in the first place. If you don’t want to go or spend your money, that’s fine with me. But, let’s no longer call ourselves a great sports city because we are not.
The Rams are bad and maybe the worst team in the National Football League, and I realize these are difficult financial times, so again I say, I have no complaint with the fans. Let’s simply end the charade that the St. Louis area supports it’s own through thick and thin.
Before the Rams got good in 1999, the Dome was regularly filled with fans that were disguised as empty seats. I went to several games where people left two tickets on their windshield wipers, hoping someone would grab them and go to the game. Sadly, when they returned to their car there would be four or six tickets there instead!
For the third home game in a row, the quarterback of the other team (Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre and now Peyton Manning) were more popular than the home town signal caller. It’s not just the attendance, it’s the attitudes that bother me. We have bought in to the cynical, ‘who cares’ attitude all too quickly.
By-the-way, until the past two or three years, people around here haven’t cared about Mizzou football either. When it comes to football, we’re front runners and need to be honest about it.
How about if we take some pride in the local team and start to make this a great sports town!
Do Good