Probably easier to just ask Rudy’s parents

i think its the entiltlement that everyone has a problem with….in any sport..its disrespecting to all the other teams..thinking your holier than thou…

I don’t know any Yankees fans who grew up going to games in the late 80s/early 90s and now believe the Yankees are entitled to a championship. If anything, there the ones most scared it will all go away again. And those fans definitely welcome the opportunity to visit the put-downs they endured onto others.

I’d think then that Leafs fans negate the volume theory. You can say it’s because Canadians are nicer people, or something like that, but they have a strong loyal and larger fanbase, who has suffered through worse patches in what is now an equally long Original 6 Cup drought. And their asshole level is surprisingly small, though their inferiority complex grows by the hour.

See, I don’t think long term success alone can make you that much of an asshole. Otherwise, Joe would be an asshole. It’s enduring the suffering and the name-calling that makes you want to visit it upon others. Franchises turn around much faster today than the Red Wings did. Selling the team and drafting Steve Yzerman didn’t immediately turn them around.

As a San Francisco Giants fan, I know I’m getting to the point where it’s just ridiculous. I DO have a Mays NY Giants jersey. I DO have a picture of the Polo Grounds because I just can’t take the nonsense any more. I wasn’t even remotely excited in 2002. But I’m also a San Francisco 49ers fan, so I know the flip side. I know what it is to be born into decades of success. So, at least for me, I was never a gloating asshole about the 49ers. BUT I will be the asshole of the century— The Asshole of Greyskull —if the Giants ever find success. I owe some shameful and ridiculous gloating just to the Dodgers fans I’ve had to live amongst.

But that’s just my point of view, and why I personally cut these a-holes some slack. I plan to join their ranks if the Giant chip on my shoulder is ever dusted off.

Well, I suppose I could have been fortunate, but I’ve run into Wings fans in the different places I’ve lived. Pretty much once you become interested in and start playing hockey, you inevitably run into someone from Michigan or Minnesota. Before 1994, I’d met Wings fans throughout the Bay Area, in Los Angeles, played street hockey with a family of Wings fans in Las Vegas, in La Jolla and in New York City.

Now, that’s a small sample size, and the only thing they have in common is being out of their element, but they carried that subdued declaration of fandom. That, “Yeah, I’m a Red Wings fan.” Very matter-of-fact, and with no positive emotions attached to the experience. And inevitably, the Northstars fans would laugh or shake their heads and look at the guy like, “You poor fucking bastard.” I chose Cameron Frye from Ferris Bueller because I feel he’s the best representation. He bleeds the colors enough to stomp through Chicago wearing the jersey, but he’s not foolish enough to wear anything contemporary. He’s not proud of anything contemporary.

It isn’t so much that I met every Red Wings fan as it is that I’ve been that fan as a Giants fan, and met those types of fans. And that’s just what it’s like when your players and organization are letting you down. You have that subdued, uneasy declaration: “Yeah. I’m a Giants fan. I can’t really cure it, but I’ve got it under control. I haven’t cried uncontrollably for a few Septembers now.”

And really Joe, I can’t imagine the Internet as the be-all end-all of interpersonal relations here. Unless A2Y speaks for everyone at the Joe, or everyone who’s ever been to the Joe, I think it’s fair to say that meeting a few vocal Red Wings bloggers who are assholes is as valid as meeting a few die-hard and subdued Red Wings fans when the franchise sucked eggs. Though, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these bloggers were assholes to begin with, I just think that when you laughed at the Red Wings in front of them, they used to just take it. What else can you do when your franchise sucks that badly.

For a long time, from 1989 until 2006, when being a Tigers fan was at varying levels of embarrassing to almost unwilling. After going through tough times, times where you’ll be heckled and demeaned wearing your team’s colors, you want to enjoy the experience of being “not terrible”. Wearing a Tigers cap during the post Fielder teams and through Randy Smith era was hard enough but from 2003 up until 2006 it was brutal. Going to see the Tigers play in Seattle was an adventure in being a human target. Being able to still proudly wear your team’s logo and colors in “enemy” territory, still cheer them despite the fact that they were terrible, it affects you. You begin to wonder if the good days will come again. You begin to feel something in the pit of your stomach. When your team trades the only players you still like on your team for Juan Gonzalez (who is on the downside of his career) you get sick to your stomach. When the same thing happens later you wonder if it is worth the emotional investment. Until you go through the very lean times, the times when an old English D, winged wheel or other logo is a scarlet letter then you will never understand why some fans act the way they do. It isn’t that they don’t care about the sport, it is that after being burned for so long the wagons are circled and won’t open up again. It’s been “us against them” for too long. Boston is going through that with the Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics. Detroit has gone through that with the Red Wings, not as much with the Tigers and, well, Pistons fans have always been a bit against the rest of the NBA.

I became a Red Wings fan in 1986 despite not being from the Michigan area because of Steve Yzerman and reading about him in Hockey Digest. When I finally was able to watch hockey regularly in the early 1990s I already knew about the Dead Things era, had seen failures and finally was sucker punched by the loss to the Devils in the SCF.

By the time the back to back championships came I was more ready for another set of failures rather than victory. When the Wings finally won, I was more relieved than anything else. They had finally done it, finally gotten that 800 pound gorilla off their back. Yzerman and company wouldn’t be in that category of good “but never won anything”.

I didn’t expect a constant legacy of winning and keeping the team at a highly competitive level. Honestly, I’m not all that against fans of other teams (though the City of Champions line annoys me but that’s just because, if we’re going on pure major 4 championships, then New York is disgustingly in the lead).

Plus, the Chief is flame baiting. Seriously, he’s mainly laying out stuff that will get people angry. He may believe some of it but much of it is to get a rise out of other fan bases. I love a good hockey game, though I am primarily a baseball fan, and hold no real ill will towards other fan bases (except for Chicago because, I mean, c’mon, they’re the ‘hawks and I’m supposed to want their blood, Colorado because of the playoffs and Anaheim because they’re brutal.

Sorry for the internet necromancy.