Thursday, January 7, 2010
Mike Shanahan to the Skins. Please Don’t Care.
Words Jesse Scaccia
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 9:13 am
There was big news for Redskins fans yesterday when the team announced that two-time Super Bowl winner Mike Shanahan is coming to town to coach the perpetually mediocre team.
I’m begging you, please don’t care about this.
In fact, please don’t care about the Redskins at all.
God judges Hampton Roads Redskins fans.
They’re not our team. I don’t mean to get all Biblical on you, but there’s nothing virtuous about rooting for the Skins when you live in Hampton Roads. To be honest, that’s 10th commandment territory, if you ask me. If my Sunday school memory serves, it is Exodus 20:17 that reads:
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor his professional football team.”
When I first moved to Hampton Roads, all the the Redskins stickers and paraphernalia I saw around town confused me. Did people not realize that DC is a full three hours away? Hampton Roads is an entirely different media market from DC. Above that, it is an entirely different culture altogether. Where’s the connection?
Most of all, I just couldn’t understand why people weren’t more excited about The Tides. As a Mets fan who grew up along the Connecticut/New York border, I had heard of the Norfolk minor league baseball team since I was little. When I moved here I was expecting Norfolk to be one of those minor league cities where it’s cool to support the local AAA team. I was expecting the players to be minor celebrities. I was ready for silly promotions at the stadium, and for afternoons spent heckling some Atlanta Brave farmhand. I fully expected to sit down at a diner and hear two old men reminiscing about when Keith Hernandez or Doc Gooden came through Norfolk.
It turned out The Tides seem to have caught little of Hampton Roads’ heart and imagination. But damn, people do love those Redskins.
She looks good, but so do The Tides. (Photo: Chris Natt)
Which, I am here to tell you, is a bad thing. Being a Redskin fan is Big City Envy. It is lusting after Angelina Jolie when you should be appreciating the perfectly lovely wife you have right next to you in bed.
Yeah, The Tides (and ODU football) might not be 10s, but as Bruce Springsteen sang in “Thunder Road,”
You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re alright
Oh and that’s alright with me
That is the attitude we must have with our local sports situation. So what if The Tides are AAA? So what if the best we’ve got for football is a 1-AA college team? I don’t care if the best we’ve got is a T-ball team. Let’s root for what is ours. Let’s celebrate teams with Norfolk or Virginia Beach on the front, and not some fairly-faraway city that, quite frankly, doesn’t give a damn about Hampton Roads.
And let’s face it, y’all: Right now Norfolk is a AAA or 1-AA city. I happen to think that’s a good thing. You know your neighbors in Hampton Roads. It’s easy to get involved in a meaningful way in local politics and government. If you’re an artist and you’re good, you’re going to get attention. We’ve got to get into our own AAA-ness.
We've got a pretty view right here already at Harbor Park.
There might be a time in the near future when Hampton Roads is ready for a major league team. After light rail is chugging along. After downtown finishes revitalizing itself a little more. Maybe even once these wars are over, and all of those military mommas and poppas are home to take their kids to the ballpark on a regular basis. I do believe that if this region plays its cards right, it will have big-time sports. But, let’s be real, it won’t be for a good long while.
As for right now, it’s time for all of Hampton Roads to burn their Redskins jerseys, bumper stickers, and house flags. (Please burn those flags no matter what.) We have some sports teams right here worth supporting. They might not have Super Bowl-winning coaches, but they’ve got our names on their jerseys, and that means something to me.
""
COMMENTS
Facebook comments:
ABOUT THE WRITER
Jesse is the editor in chief of AltDaily, and he's going to take this bio seriously, but not so seriously that he's going to continue in the third person. I've been involved with a bunch of local projects and civic groups in various roles, including: Hampton Roads, The Canvas; Art | Everywhere, Street Performance in Norfolk; Survive Norfolk; Hampton Roads Pride/Out in the Park; Bike Norfolk; re:Vision Norfolk, and such.
I originally came to Norfolk as a Perry Morgan fellow in ODU's creative writing program. Before that I bummed around quite a bit, writing stacks of books that never got published, hitchhiking, couchsurfing, riding the Greyhound up down and back across this country. Some of my favorite jobs and volunteer gigs have included working on organic farms in Ireland; being first mate on an old sail boat in Holland; working at a long-term home for young men in South Africa; being a journalist and high school teacher in New York and California; washing dishes in Yosemite National Park; teaching English in DC and swimming in Florida; and interning at ESPN in Bristol, which was much less cool that you'd want it to be. My career highlights have been having three of my op-eds run in the New York Times, and being the executive producer of a six-part docu-drama on BET. Because school is cool I have three master's degrees (ODU for MFA, NYU for magazine journalism, University of Connecticut for secondary English education). I live in Norfolk because I believe in its potential. Email your ideas or nicely couched criticism to jesse@altdaily.com.
Other posts by Jesse Scaccia.
Other posts by Jesse Scaccia.
RELATED POSTS
More Sports Posts
RSS
I couldn’t agree more, Jesse!!! When I came here back in 1991, I was just as confused over the Redskins love.
The local teams simply MUST do more to promote themselves. Hell, it took me 3 years to figure out we had an ECHL hockey team here! Now that the Admirals have bumped up to the AHL (much like the Tides being AAA), the play is very near major league level, and only costs a fraction to see. Want what you have, Hampton Roads!
Immy,
First of all, thank you.
Second, I forgot to mention that I’m checking out my first Admirals game this Saturday night. I’m excited. Hockey might be the best live sport.
Hockey is an awesome sport. From street hockey to the NHL, it incorporates all sports into one. Soccer, Football, Figure Skating, Boxing, etc…….I miss ice……..
And what about the person who grew up in the DC ‘burbs but now lives in Norfolk?? I feel completely entitled to bring my love down here, or anywhere I go!
PS- I frequent Tides and Admirals games, I think it’s perfectly OK to have the best of both worlds.
Jenifer,
I should have mentioned that: People from the DC area get a pass. I agree, you are entitled, just as I’m entitled to still support my beloved Knicks, wherever I go.
Is it horrible that I’d really rather just not have a big team, no matter how big or cool Norfolk gets? Moving in from Knoxville… where football season meant a schedule of weekends when traffic is guaranteed to be so clogged that leaving the house is mostly a bad idea and all the cool stuff happens at the same time on the Away Game weekends so you’re forced to choose…
I know the mania props up the local economy and all that jazz, but AAA all the way.
Drivel!
Believe it or not, there are plenty of local sports fans who support the Norfolk Tides, ODU football AND the Redskins. They do not need to be mutually exclusive.
Your column might have more impact if you suggested an alternative NFL team to root for. Instead, it comes off as nothing more than another argument to “buy local for the sake of buying local.” You know what? There are some things you just can’t get locally. Like professional football.
Besides, if you want to harp on a team that has an inexplicable fan base in this area, pick on the Atlanta Braves.
Ugh, the Braves?! That’s even worse.
And Jim, maybe you haven’t driven across our fine country, and seen how almost all of it is the same mini-mall of shit over and over and over. Forgive me if I prefer to live in a place where its own singular culture is celebrated, rather than pimped out to the box stores and ticky tack emporiums.
I have driven cross-country — twice — but I don’t see the correlation between strip malls and rooting for an NFL team.
Again, I think my issue with your column is that it is veiled as a diatribe against the Redskins, but it’s really anti-NFL (for anyone who doesn’t live in the immediate vicinity of a team). What’s the harm in rooting for a professional team — regardless of who it is — if you also support local teams?
I have nothing against the Skins or being fans of multiple teams. I think you get my intention was to help drum up (even more) support for ODU football, the Tides, and the Admirals.
The cross-country line was in response to your mentioning ‘buy local for the sake of buying local’.
Couldn’t agree more. I’ll be at Harbor Park on opening day, just like I was at ODU-Chowan, and just like I was at the Admirals game last night.