09-15-2015, 10:36 PM
(09-15-2015, 10:19 PM)The Real Deal Wrote: Not me bro?
You "both" seem fixated on the fanbase and close proximity in date of first post.
(09-15-2015, 10:16 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: KC made it to the AFC championship with Montana. The Steelers won 4 Super Bowls under Noll. These levels of success tend to quell fan bases. Can you describe any other markets that dealt with a 25 year playoff-win drought with 12 years of complete ineptitude built into that? I can come close. Up here in Michigan, the Lions are mostly an afterthought. They come in a distant 3rd in interest, behind the Spartans, Wolverines and Tigers. Lions fans do have negative feelings about their team, but they don't gripe about it much. They just have a "Lions will be the Lions" attitude about it.
You comment a few posts ago about the perception of a team that is progressively improving and this are completely valid.
Here. Atl. I saw the fanbase for the Falcons being well behind other teams as you see in Detroit due to the success of the Braves and Bulldogs (well, Bulldogs only comparative to the Falcons). They made a superbowl and not much changed after that loss. However Michael Vick came to town and yes, during his time the interest in the team increased and there were vocal critics of the team who were also fans of the team. Now, with Ryan, I see more homerism than anything.
So yeah, history is a big factor with fan mentality.
In Cincy you had (and yes I was there for this) the big promise of "Give us a new stadium so we can be competitive. New stadium and nothing improve. Threat of a lawsuit for breach of contract since they weren't competitive. Brown hires Lewis and goes hands off. Success comes. Lawsuit defaults and suddenly Brown puts his hand back into the team and it goes bad again. Lewis comes up for contract renewal and from some things I've see I believe Brown returns to hand off and the team improves again but the progress seems stalled. Yeah, this breeds contempt even in some die hard fans. (and yes I was in Cincy both before superbowl appearances and then again for the second half of the horrible years into the Palmer days).
During the Palmer days I recall some national sports pundit making a comment about Cincy sports teams being just barely good enough to pay attention to and not better. That was in 2006 I think.
