Thanks to everyone who has expressed their support in this thread and elsewhere via social media. It's always nice to be reminded that there are still lots of people who get it.
Unfortunately the issues that JVN described in his blog aren't new. 1114 has been dealing with these sorts of comments for years. Sometimes they become very public in the case of things like booing, but more often than not they happen when people are hidden behind (or believe they're hidden) a cloak of anonymity. It's not only 1114 who has to deal with this. Over the years, great teams like 47, 67, 71, 111, 148, 217, 233, 254, 469, 2056 among many many others have been needlessly bashed. Most do it privately, but others do it publicly. Regardless, it's not cool.
So how do we stop it? We cannot tolerate it. If you see/hear someone acting this way, call them out on it. Don't just laugh awkwardly and ignore it, squash it. If we passively ignore this type of behavior, it becomes acceptable. Too often people just say "oh, you should take it as a compliment, it means you're good." I'm sorry, but we can do better than that. We need to take a stand at teams who are doing this, directly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rutzman
That shock quickly subsided- I hadn't witnessed the occurrences specifically listed in your blog, but I had seen similar events over the course of the regional. The lack of professionalism shown by a handful of people in Pittsburgh was disgusting.
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What were these similar events?