FinsBR
Dolfan from São Paulo - Brazil
I kinda agree with him...
It is a strange season when fans cheer for Miami Dolphins to lose
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/...a-strange-season-when-fans.html#ixzz1bFGnqT7b
[h=3]GCOTE@MIAMIHERALD.COM[/h]There is a human toll for these can’t-win Dolphins, a side of this nightmarish season that goes deeper than the frustration and embarrassment of an 0-5 record. There is anger in what is happening, too, a sense of betrayal. There is hurt.
It isn’t just how fans are feeling about their team and franchise right now.
It is also how the team is feeling about too many of its fans.
Tuesday’s press conference had ended, the latest post-mortem in a season that had just died a little bit more, and coach Tony Sparano and I were off to ourselves in a corner of the lobby of the club’s Davie headquarters.
He leaned against a leather chair, arms folded across his chest, head down.
I asked him (nobody had, and somebody had to) about “Suck For Luck,” the growing fan movement that posits it is better to keep losing and losing and losing in order to attain the No. 1 overall draft pick and prized Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck.
He paused at some length. Can you imagine how debilitating it must be to think many of even your own fans have become self-defeatists who wish you to lose? When Sparano spoke his voice was measured and soft, but the words had sharp edges.
“There are too many people in this building and in that lockerroom that work too hard and put in too much time to ever consider that sitting well. When you hear it, it don’t sit well,” he said. “For these people here who put effort in every day, and how proud they are to be part of the Dolphins organization, that angers me.”
This is the strangest of football seasons.
The record says the Dolphins don’t know how to play, and their fans don’t know how to act — torn between the traditional instinct of rooting for one’s team and seeing a greater good in trading short-term humiliation for lasting great Luck.
Denver visiting this coming Sunday presents the latest dilemma. It seems the most winnable game left on the schedule, maybe the last one to find the Dolphins favored. To traditionalists, it is a huge chance to finally win and begin to make the most of what’s left of the season. But to Suck For Luckers, the danger of winning is an opportunity lost.
I happened to be a guest Tuesday of the Miami Dolphins Touchdown Club luncheon at the stadium. What a conflicted group, this hardcore wing of the fandom. Parts angry, frustrated, faithful exasperated, you name it.
I took a recent poll in my blog. Thousands voted, and 69.6 percent said they supported the Suck For Luck movement, vs. 17.7% who opposed it and 12.7% who were undecided. That’s a 4-to-1 margin for Dolfans who see continued losing as preferable to the apparently quaint notion that a fan’s first obligation is to hope his team wins.
I understand the rationale behind Suck For Luck — the ultimate consolation prize – but can’t bring myself to agree with it.
I would make two points.
First, the young and impossibly named Mr. Luck could decide to return for his senior year. Or might stun the experts and turn out to be Ryan Leaf, a big disappointment. Or he might use his considerable leverage to manipulate the draft as QBs from John Elway to Eli Manning have done. In other words, there is no absolute assurance that the No. 1 draft pick brings you Luck, or the Luck you assume you are getting.
Second, I thought the bedrock fundamental of being a fan was that you wanted your team to win. Isn’t that were it starts? With loyalty? To me, understanding that even Luck comes with no guarantee, a self-respecting Dolfan ought to cheer for Miami to win A) because it’s right, and B) because there are other possible consolation prizes awaiting other than the No. pick. One of them is named Landry Jones. He is the Oklahoma quarterback who might be as good as Luck or (who knows?) even better.
The expression, or statement, of Suck For Luck is every fan’s right. Just don’t expect the team you are scorning to nod understandingly. The visual equivalent would be a bloom of paper bags with cutout eyes turning up on Dolfan heads. Another right, a quintessential symbol of frustration, but also a dubious gesture that only further shames the very team a so-called fan should ostensibly be supporting.
Suck For Luck and paper bags are insults, and taken as such.
We too easily forget the blood and sweat players and coaches are spending, as yet unrewarded by a vindicating victory, and increasingly unrewarded by the feeling of support. How would you as a player or coach feel, five games into a 16-game season, to see so many of your own fans abandoning you?
“This team is going to approach every single game as a game we’re going to win,” Sparano told me, even knowing many fans in his own stadium hope the contrary.
Meantime the black humor grows, the idea it’s better to laugh than cry.
Jason Taylor’s young son plays on a flag football team also called the Dolphins, except his team is 7-0. You know what the boy said to his dad the other day? “We’re the Opposite Dolphins.”
What do you call a room full of Dolphins fans? A therapy session.
The Dolphins: Putting the Fin in finished.
One more: You know it’s gotten bad when the Dolphins were outscored Monday by the Panthers. (Sure enough, our hockey team won 7-4 the same night the Dolphins were held to two field goals by the Jets).
We laugh, and give up, and chant “Suck For Luck,” all so easily, while a winless team tries with all its might to rally its pride and win a game, despite us.
I like Sparano, by the way. I also think a coaching change is coming — it could happen Sunday if the game is yet another home loss — and that big changes are needed. Sparano will work in this league for a long time, but likely not again as a head coach.
One on one, I asked Sparano Tuesday how tough this has been for him personally, knowing that as he fights to see his team smile and to save his own coaching future, he is shadowed by the broad assumption that he is, well, a ghost. A dead man coaching.
“I come to work every day and do the same things,” he said. “I keep my head down and go to work.”
He didn’t mean head down, as in resignation.
He meant head down, where the grindstone is, where a man spends a lifetime believing hard work pays off, and tries desperately now to keep believing that.
It’s all he can do.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/...a-strange-season-when-fans.html#ixzz1bFGiF85m
It is a strange season when fans cheer for Miami Dolphins to lose
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/...a-strange-season-when-fans.html#ixzz1bFGnqT7b
[h=3]GCOTE@MIAMIHERALD.COM[/h]There is a human toll for these can’t-win Dolphins, a side of this nightmarish season that goes deeper than the frustration and embarrassment of an 0-5 record. There is anger in what is happening, too, a sense of betrayal. There is hurt.
It isn’t just how fans are feeling about their team and franchise right now.
It is also how the team is feeling about too many of its fans.
Tuesday’s press conference had ended, the latest post-mortem in a season that had just died a little bit more, and coach Tony Sparano and I were off to ourselves in a corner of the lobby of the club’s Davie headquarters.
He leaned against a leather chair, arms folded across his chest, head down.
I asked him (nobody had, and somebody had to) about “Suck For Luck,” the growing fan movement that posits it is better to keep losing and losing and losing in order to attain the No. 1 overall draft pick and prized Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck.
He paused at some length. Can you imagine how debilitating it must be to think many of even your own fans have become self-defeatists who wish you to lose? When Sparano spoke his voice was measured and soft, but the words had sharp edges.
“There are too many people in this building and in that lockerroom that work too hard and put in too much time to ever consider that sitting well. When you hear it, it don’t sit well,” he said. “For these people here who put effort in every day, and how proud they are to be part of the Dolphins organization, that angers me.”
This is the strangest of football seasons.
The record says the Dolphins don’t know how to play, and their fans don’t know how to act — torn between the traditional instinct of rooting for one’s team and seeing a greater good in trading short-term humiliation for lasting great Luck.
Denver visiting this coming Sunday presents the latest dilemma. It seems the most winnable game left on the schedule, maybe the last one to find the Dolphins favored. To traditionalists, it is a huge chance to finally win and begin to make the most of what’s left of the season. But to Suck For Luckers, the danger of winning is an opportunity lost.
I happened to be a guest Tuesday of the Miami Dolphins Touchdown Club luncheon at the stadium. What a conflicted group, this hardcore wing of the fandom. Parts angry, frustrated, faithful exasperated, you name it.
I took a recent poll in my blog. Thousands voted, and 69.6 percent said they supported the Suck For Luck movement, vs. 17.7% who opposed it and 12.7% who were undecided. That’s a 4-to-1 margin for Dolfans who see continued losing as preferable to the apparently quaint notion that a fan’s first obligation is to hope his team wins.
I understand the rationale behind Suck For Luck — the ultimate consolation prize – but can’t bring myself to agree with it.
I would make two points.
First, the young and impossibly named Mr. Luck could decide to return for his senior year. Or might stun the experts and turn out to be Ryan Leaf, a big disappointment. Or he might use his considerable leverage to manipulate the draft as QBs from John Elway to Eli Manning have done. In other words, there is no absolute assurance that the No. 1 draft pick brings you Luck, or the Luck you assume you are getting.
Second, I thought the bedrock fundamental of being a fan was that you wanted your team to win. Isn’t that were it starts? With loyalty? To me, understanding that even Luck comes with no guarantee, a self-respecting Dolfan ought to cheer for Miami to win A) because it’s right, and B) because there are other possible consolation prizes awaiting other than the No. pick. One of them is named Landry Jones. He is the Oklahoma quarterback who might be as good as Luck or (who knows?) even better.
The expression, or statement, of Suck For Luck is every fan’s right. Just don’t expect the team you are scorning to nod understandingly. The visual equivalent would be a bloom of paper bags with cutout eyes turning up on Dolfan heads. Another right, a quintessential symbol of frustration, but also a dubious gesture that only further shames the very team a so-called fan should ostensibly be supporting.
Suck For Luck and paper bags are insults, and taken as such.
We too easily forget the blood and sweat players and coaches are spending, as yet unrewarded by a vindicating victory, and increasingly unrewarded by the feeling of support. How would you as a player or coach feel, five games into a 16-game season, to see so many of your own fans abandoning you?
“This team is going to approach every single game as a game we’re going to win,” Sparano told me, even knowing many fans in his own stadium hope the contrary.
Meantime the black humor grows, the idea it’s better to laugh than cry.
Jason Taylor’s young son plays on a flag football team also called the Dolphins, except his team is 7-0. You know what the boy said to his dad the other day? “We’re the Opposite Dolphins.”
What do you call a room full of Dolphins fans? A therapy session.
The Dolphins: Putting the Fin in finished.
One more: You know it’s gotten bad when the Dolphins were outscored Monday by the Panthers. (Sure enough, our hockey team won 7-4 the same night the Dolphins were held to two field goals by the Jets).
We laugh, and give up, and chant “Suck For Luck,” all so easily, while a winless team tries with all its might to rally its pride and win a game, despite us.
I like Sparano, by the way. I also think a coaching change is coming — it could happen Sunday if the game is yet another home loss — and that big changes are needed. Sparano will work in this league for a long time, but likely not again as a head coach.
One on one, I asked Sparano Tuesday how tough this has been for him personally, knowing that as he fights to see his team smile and to save his own coaching future, he is shadowed by the broad assumption that he is, well, a ghost. A dead man coaching.
“I come to work every day and do the same things,” he said. “I keep my head down and go to work.”
He didn’t mean head down, as in resignation.
He meant head down, where the grindstone is, where a man spends a lifetime believing hard work pays off, and tries desperately now to keep believing that.
It’s all he can do.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/...a-strange-season-when-fans.html#ixzz1bFGiF85m
