A blog about my life, my interests, my hopes, my dreams, and because it's cheaper than therapy.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sports entitlement

Its no secret to those people who know me that one of my biggest issues with living around St. Louis is the sports (seeing I'm a Chicago sports fan). Along with being bombarded with sports information from teams I don't really care about and subjected to televised games I don't want to watch, one of my biggest problems with the sports around here is focused on the St. Louis Cardinals. Specifically, the sense of entitlement I sense in the fans; as if the team (ergo themselves) deserve to win. They base this on many things, from past winning success to the passion of the fan base.

If I'm intellectually honest with myself, a team I root for has this exact same issue; the Chicago Bears. This is illustrated in the following article from the Chicago Sun Times


We deserve better than this

Do you really Chicago? Do you? No, you don't! To quote from the article:

"What does Pittsburgh have that Chicago doesn't? Fans are just as passionate, if not longer-suffering. Both are largely blue-collar cities. Both franchises are steeped in football history, and both are family-owned."

The article's author goes on to say the reason for the difference is ownership, citing how awesome the Rooney's of Pittsburgh are and how ehh the Chicago owners are. The implication is that because Chicago has all the same ingredients as Pittsburgh, the city should be entitled to its success. Do you see how this sense of entitlement has seeped into the sports conscious from the greater conscious of society? In this world, no one is entitled to anything, and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we are able to go out and make our own way for ourselves. We will no longer be bound to the sidelines, waiting for someone else to give us what we should be out earning for ourselves. Reading this article and its entitlement overtones makes me sick to be a Bears fan today, just as a Cardinals fan should be sick every time someone says "But we're St. Louis, we DESERVE a great baseball team." If it is something you want, then you should go out and earn it for yourself.

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