Roger Goodell Faced “Boo’s”, De Smith Faced Chants Of “We want Football!”

Photo courtesy of Bleacher Reports and Google Images

It was two different days and two different places, but with the same sense of frustration by the fans. I’ll go ahead and comment on the headline for now, but as always the headline is only the surface of the issue. Hidden underneath each headline and rarely uncovered are myriad and sundry issues that led up to the status quo.

As long as I continue to write here I hope to feel that I “scratched beneath the surface” in order to further the writing standards we strive to uphold.

We all remember the draft, and the feeling of “normalcy” that it gave us for those fleeting moments. The NFL commissioner was greeted with boo’s as he prepared to address the crowd. I’m sure it was embarrassing, but Roger handled it well.

De Smith faced a similar situation at the University of Maryland as he prepared to address the crowd as well. This time it was chants of: “We want Football!”. De Smith responded with: “I want football, too”.

De Smith tried as Goodell did to make the best of a contentious situation; he had technical difficulties with equipment but did Ok in the end.

But neither situation was the Paul Harvey “End of The Story”. Neither situation was the beginning of the story either. All this didn’t start March 11th; it started years ago. Both sides started preparing for what we are going through a long time ago.

I’ll stop at this point and raise my flag, show my colors. I stand neither with the owners or the players; I stand with the fans.

A few days ago while looking for issues to cover here I found one. It was an article, no, mostly a video. It was presented by one of the very top media sports outlets. The subject was this: “NFL Lockout’s Hidden Victims”.

I thought “great”, someone will finally address the fan’s point of view, but I was wrong. The intro was encouraging: “We’ve talked a lot about how an NFL lockout that will affect players, owners, organizations. but there is one group that will be affected that no one has discussed.”

It turned out they weren’t talking about the fans, but talking about charities. Yes, the premise was valid; charities are a hidden victim of the lockout.

But if that major media outlet will address the players, owners, organizations first, then specify charities as the hidden victims, then surely the fans are truly the hidden victims. The fans pay every single dollar of the 9 billion in revenue.

I have a dog in this race; I’m a fan, and have been for a long time.

I wish to repeat the fan’s chant to De Smith: “We want Football!”.