Step Your Game Up, America

How many times do we have to watch a sporting event in this country where the fans have to be told what to say or sing by the PA system? Is D-Fence the best we can do? If so, we might as well pack it up. American fandom is like Bollywood. We’re stuck in a moment and we can’t get out of … Fuck I was writing that and I just realized I’m quoting a U2 song. I’m going to punch myself in the balls for that after I finish this post.

Check these non-league soccer fans from England. The goalie just let in a soft goal during a match between Welling United and Maidstone. The fans wasted no time letting him know exactly what they thought of him.

Are we going to let ourselves be shown up by a bunch of part-timers? Are we going to be held hostage by arena sound systems and organs? We gotta eat lightning and crap thunder, America. Fuck yeah.

Michigan Fan Is Hot For Jim Tressel

Maybe it’s the sweater vests that get it done for Michigan fan John McKay. He likes to stalk Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel wherever he goes under the guise of hating Ohio State.

”I have a history of denigrating Coach Tressel,” McKay said. ”He cheats everywhere he goes, and he’s holier than thou. And he’s yet to beat an SEC team. I’m not impressed.”

There’s no word on whether Tressel is considering a restraining order or showing McKay his version of the Dirty Horseshoe. For the record, McKay was born and raised in Georgia and went to Georgia for college.

In other Michigan news, Go Blue! has new uniforms and it’s national news. The new jerseys include a quote from Bo Schembechler, “Because I couldn’t go for three”. Oh wait, that was Woody Hayes. Never mind.

Blue Jays Fans Cannot Hold Their Liquor

The Toronto Blue Jays are thinking of scrapping their $2 upper deck seat promotion because too many fights occurred during the past couple $2 seat nights:

Nearly 100 fans were ejected from Rogers Centre in both the April 4 home opener against Boston and Tuesday’s game against Oakland, mostly for “alcohol-related” incidents, Godfrey said.

A man and a woman, both shirtless, ran onto the field in the ninth inning of the home opener.

See, when you give away seats for that cheap the only thing to do with the extra money is to spend it on booze. Unfortunately, it appears a bunch of Canadians cannot hold their liquor (wonder what these guys think of this). In any event, because of all of this, no alcohol will be sold in the upper decks for the rest of the promotion days and there will be extra security to pad people down for smuggling in hard alcohol and beers.

Of course, this just means that people will go down to the lower levels and chug beers as fast as they can and either proceed to streak the field or walk back up to their cheap seats on the upper deck to get into some fights. Doesn’t seem like much of a solution to the problem. More like using your finger to stop a leak and 2 more spring up.

With any luck though, we’ll see more action like this

From ESPN

US Sports Fans Want To Buy A Team

In an idea similar to the Myfootballclub.uk’s successful effort to purchase a European football club, some guys here in the good ole US of A are trying to gather sports fans together to purchase a professional sports franchise of any type. Its called Project Franchise and it wants sports fans of all types to give $5 bucks for a share in a sports team yet to be purchased. They aren’t trying to buy a MLB, NBA, NFL, or NHL team yet, we all know those cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but they are trying to buy into a minor league baseball or hockey team, NBDL franchise, or Arena League team.

With your 5 bucks, you get a vote in the running of a professional sports team (“team name, colors, coaches and lineups all the way down to condiments at the concession stand”), which is pretty much every fan’s dream, right? Seems pretty cheap to me but also just a little bit dangerous if they aren’t careful because the British version wanted a donation of 70 bucks for 1 share and each person could have just 1 share so that block voting did not occur. Lets hope this rule exists here.

Also, they’ll have to get tens of thousands of donations to get enough to purchase a team. 50,000 people with 5 dollar donations means just $250,000 and I wouldn’t think that’d be enough, but what do I know.

We’ll see if these guys can figure out these kinks as it goes, but right now they just want people to sign up for their mailing list if they are interested in the idea or there is a facebook group you can sign up with.

Its an interesting idea and we encourage you to sign up and see what happens, I mean, the worst thing is you get your 5 bucks back and you don’t own a team. Nothing wrong with that.

From Project Franchise

20,000 Soccer Fans Now Own Team

In a story we’ve been following here for awhile, the MyFootballClub.co.UK people have finally successfully purchased an English Premiership Football team. The site allowed soccer fans to pay £35 each for a share in a team to be purchased in the future. Yesterday it was announced that the group had purchased Ebbsfleet United PC, a Blue Square Premier team that is currently in 9th place and just 1 promotion away from reaching Football League for the first time in team history.

The new owners of the team have a 51% controlling stake and each member of MyFootballClub will vote on whom the team should buy to move the team forward in the future and other ownership matters.

Crazy what can happen when a group of fans get together to make a change in sport. The fans are the ones that really put the money in the player’s pockets, it seems only fair that the fans should be able to make a decision as to how the team is run. These people took that idea and ran with it.

If only this could happen here in the States. Imagine if a group of NBA fans got together and pooled enough money to purchase the Seattle Supersonics to keep them in Seattle, or if a group of MLB fans pooled their resources to purchase the Chicago Cubs? How much better or worse could either one of those organizations be run? Certainly, neither could be run as poorly as they are now.

Here’s to hoping one day, us fans in the United States wise up and realize that we can do something like this and keep teams out of the hands of the Dan Snyders of the world. Individually we are weak, together, we are strong…or something like that.

From BBC Sport

Can Boston Fans Really Be This Dumb?

Yes…yes they can.

Eagles Fans Take Their Losses Badly

This guy is the Hater and he is most upset about the Eagles 0-2 start to the season. From the video, this is a high quality production by Phillypurge.com. The Hater kinda runs out of steam in the middle of this, it must be tough to yell for nearly 3 minutes straight, but I’m most impressed that he can read his script with just one eye. The glorious moment in this video is when he literally switches paper bags at around the 3:45 mark and is now a screaming Phillies fan screaming for them to “MAKE THE PLAYOFFS!!!!!”. Philadelphia sports fans have some passion for their losers I tells ya.

Ball Hits Face, Man Falls Down

Poor quality video here, but its pretty damn funny watching this fat-ass get nailed in the head and slow motion belly-flop onto the seats underneath him. People, this is high comedy.

Eagles Fans Are Worse Rappers Than Brandon Lloyd

Bad Andy here is a big Eagles fan…so much of a fan he is driven to write a rap song about his beloved eagles. As you might imagine, it is absolutely horrible. While I am surprised an Eagles fan actually can write a sentence, I am not at all surprised by this guy’s severe lack of rhythm or rhyme. He raps passed with pass for Christ’s sake. Just bad…Bad Andy! BAD!

Razorback Fan Throats A Dog

This guy must be a favorite of a lot of guys out there in Arkansas. Watch as he displays his tailgating talent of deep-throating a hot-dog. I hope he stays out of the bathrooms what with recent scandals these days. WHOO PIG SOOWEE indeed.