Rick Reilly chose none of these reasons. The reasons he did choose? Insane. Let's get to it.
You root for the Green Bay Packers in this Super Bowl because Steelers fans want their team to win but Packers fans need their team to win. They need it like air.
One paragraph in before the "Packers fans are the greatest! They're the Cardinals fans of football!" It's the NFL. Every team has die-hard fans (except the Jaguars.) The Packers fans are no better or worse than any other, and certainly don't "need it like air"
The football stadium can fit 72 percent of the town inside of it. One in every 54,000 Chicagoans is a Bears' fan, but one in 1,900 Green Bay residents is a Packers' fan. It says "Titletown" on the city seal. The Packers are Green Bay and vice versa. Their very souls are dimpled pigskin.
Based on that first sentence, I'm going to assume Reilly arrived at these dubious numbers by dividing the capacity of Soldier Field by the population of Chicago. Putting aside for a second the silly idea that you're only a Bears fan if you're actually at Soldier Field on gameday, the numbers in that case are 1 in 46 for just Chicagoans, and 1 in 159 if you include the whole metro area. For Green Bay it's 1 in 1.4 for the city, and 1 in 4 for the metro area. Either way Reilly's math is way off.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because most of the hotels in Green Bay are sold out for the game. Yes, hotels in Green Bay are sold out for a game in Dallas. "I got people from all over the country coming to watch the game at my bar," says Jerry Watson, who owns Stadium View, the biggest tavern in town. "Packers fans just have to watch with other Packers fans. ... Last time we were in a Super Bowl, I came to open up in the morning and I had 1,000 people waiting to get in. At 8 a.m. I turned the lock and ran for it."
Ran where? Aren't you the bar owner? Shouldn't you want people coming to your bar?
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because karma owes Brett Favre a very terrible Sunday for what he did to Packers fans; for what he did to the front office; for all the fake retirement press conferences and fake tears and fake posturing; for dragging Aaron Rodgers' career around through his own muddy whims. Rodgers deserved better and now he deserves this.
Oh, maybe he does mention Favre. Ok, we agree on this one.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because Green Bay is the last little town to keep its team. You want it for Decatur, Ill., which lost its team to Chicago, and Portsmouth, Ohio, which lost its to Detroit, and Pottsville. Pa., which lost its to Boston. You root for the Packers for the same reason you root for Roberto Benigni to win the Oscar or Buster Douglas to win the fight. It's right.
Buster Douglass, the paragon for the underdog! It's not like he lost his next fight, ballooned to 400 pounds, and almost died in a diabetic coma. Oh wait...
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because it's more than just Green Bay's football team. It's the blood in their veins and the asphalt under their tires. They drive down Lombardi Avenue. They speed down Holmgren Way. They park on Reggie White Way. They learn at Vince Lombardi Elementary and daydream of starring at Lambeau Field. And if they lose Sunday, there will be a line to jump off Ray Nitschke Bridge.
Yes, we get it, there's nothing going on in Green Bay besides the Packers. That's not a good reason to root for them. And I'm willing to bet, considering the Packers are a young team on the rise, there won't be mass suicides if they lose on Sunday.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl for guys like the one on PackerForum.com writing about hearing his mom shriek downstairs and thinking she's in trouble and running down to find her in her robe and slippers shrieking in delight at the man standing in the doorway, Packers god Bart Starr, who had stopped by to drop off some gifts as thanks for the guy cutting Starr's lawn and shoveling his sidewalk this year.
One of the things that annoys me about Reilly's shtick is when people email him little human interest stories like this, and he finds awkward ways to shoehorn them into columns like this one.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because being a Steelers fan is a sickness but being a Packers fan is incurable. In Green Bay, Packers gas up where you gas up, pray where you pray, eat where you eat. The players are like family, which means they get yelled at a lot. "That's the thing that's a little different here," says All-Pro Packers linebacker Clay Matthews. "If you mess up here, the lady at the grocery store will let you know."
Yeah, no where else in America are players held accountable for their play on the field by the fans. (I know there are millions of examples of this, but I'm being lazy right now.)
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because, at the end of it, they're not giving out the Noll Trophy, they're giving out the Lombardi Trophy. Nobody on Broadway is rushing to see the hit play Cowher, but they are rushing to see the hit play Lombardi. (Over the years, though, many have gone to the one about Troy Polamalu: Hair.)
Haha, jokes. Seriously, is anyone rushing to see the hit play Lombardi? I will say, however, that the Broadway play Cowher would be even worse.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because Packers fans took a taunt -- "You cheesehead!" -- and turned it into a gouda thing. In 1987, Ralph Bruno, while upholstering his mother's couch in Milwaukee, burned holes into one of the cushions, carved a hole for his head and painted it yellow. Thus, the Cheesehead product line was born. In Green Bay, you can also buy cheese top hats, cheese sombreros, cheese ties, cheese earrings, cheese footballs, cheese bricks, cheese beer cozies, cheese sunglasses, cheese flying discs and, naturally, cheese fezzes.
I absolutely love that the first cheesehead was made out of a couch cushion. Also, "You cheesehead!" is a terrible taunt. And "gouda thing" is a terrible pun.
Do they wear steel beams in Pittsburgh?
No, but they wave stupid little yellow handkerchiefs around and pretend like that's something special.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because if the Steelers left Pittsburgh there would still be the Penguins, who won the Stanley Cup in 2009, and the Pirates. True, they stink, but Albert Pujols visits all the time.
I'm sure seeing Albert Pujols in person makes being a Pirates fan worth it.
If the Packers left, Green Bay's major attraction would be the L.H. Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve. But some people would still take Packerland Drive to get there.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because every now and then the game needs to have on top the little team nobody can seem to hate.
Me! Me! I can hate them! Just watch! Also, these guys.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because of Ouida Wright and her boyfriend, who never dreamed being homeless in Green Bay would be lucky. They were on the street when the Dallas Convention and Visitor's Bureau sent a "mystery" man out, waiting for someone to address him with the secret phrase: "Have you been to Dallas lately?" Wright heard about it, said it to the right guy and now she's going to the Big Bowl with her boyfriend. Hotel, tickets, flights--everything paid.
Yes, when they come back to Green Bay from watching the Packers play in the Super Bowl, they still won't have anywhere to live.
Maybe if Green Bay was such the altruistic white knight of the NFL, they'd find these fans a place to live. But they won't, because the world doesn't work like that, and there are no "good teams" and "bad teams". Every team wants and deserves to win equally.
What's your point?
My point is you're a moron and that's a terrible way to end an article.
No comments:
Post a Comment