Maybe, Just Maybe, It's Time To Stop Caring If People Wear Opposing Team Jerseys To Games
So as you may recall from the triple-blog yesterday, Mike Scott was involved in a little altercation at the Eagles tailgate yesterday. It’s still a little hard to tell exactly who is at fault here but it seems like both sides are a little guilty. This is the clearest video I’ve seen of it so far and it definitely doesn’t look like Mike Scott was just jumped or anything for wearing a Redskins jersey, but I also have to imagine that the whole thing got started by some heckles about the jersey.
Apparently the casket was also a focal point of the donnybrook. I feel like a lot of people out there probably think it’s a little crazy to bring an entire casket to a tailgate for a football game but that just seems pretty par for the course here in Philly. Seeing the casket didn’t even register to me the first few times I watched this video just because it’s nothing out of the ordinary for an Eagles tailgate. But I digress.
At the end of the day, everyone looks pretty bad in this video. Don’t get me wrong–this video makes me love Mike Scott even more. He’s truly becoming a Philadelphian before our eyes. He has adopted Philly culture as his own and he is now one of us, despite wearing the Skins jersey. Getting into a scuffle at an Eagles tailgate is just a rite of passage here. And for a man who famously said “I ain’t no bitch”, he sure as hell backed that up by squaring up and getting ready to fight that entire group. So it’s not a “bad look” for Mike Scott or anything like that, but it just doesn’t look good for anyone.
But now I feel like we’re at this point where it’s time for at least a little change. I don’t want Philly fans to get soft. I don’t want Philly fans to stop caring about our teams more than we care about our own personal well being. But I do think that maybe it’s time to stop caring so damn much if people who grew up rooting for another team come to the game wearing the jersey of the team that they grew up rooting for. Mike Scott grew up as a Redskins fan and I think it would end up being a worse look for him overall if he showed up to the game yesterday wearing an Eagles jersey than this fight was. Would you show up to a game in Dallas wearing a Cowboys jersey? Would you show up to a game in Dallas wearing no team affiliated gear at all? Or would you show up to a game in Dallas wearing an Eagles jersey and an Eagles hat and Eagles Zubaz while starting an “E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES” chant as loud and often as humanly possible? Pretty sure we all know the only answer here.
It’s just that maybe every time we see someone at the Linc wearing a jersey of an opposing team, we don’t need to start an “aaaassshoooole” chant. But if it’s just muscle memory at this point and you can’t control the urge to call someone an asshole for wearing another jersey to the game, then just keep it at that and move on. You get 2 or 3 “assholes” and then that’s it. Maybe you can sneak a 4th “asshole” in there if the person genuinely seems to be enjoying the reaction that they’re eliciting, but nothing more. Anything more than that and you just end up looking like an asshole yourself.
Fights are going to happen at the tailgates. That’s inevitable. But if you’re going to fight anyone, at least let there be a legitimate reason to start throwing hands rather than just shit taking getting out of hand because somebody grew up rooting for a different team than you did. If somebody truly deserves to get hit? Well then I get it. But if you’re just angry that somebody else likes a team that you don’t like? Maybe just stop showing up to the games because the other 99% of Eagles fans don’t want you there either.