Downright Nasty

Trey Smith

One of the great rituals of society is to express displeasure at athletes, particularly professional ones. Fans get all upset if these athletes don't behave like saints, yet the fans themselves can be downright nasty. Take what happened yesterday in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri.

The professional football team in KC is known as the Chiefs. Back when I was growing up in the 60s, the Chiefs were a perennial top team. We were champions of the old American Football League 3 times and played in 2 of the first 4 Super Bowls, winning once.

After our glory years, the team fell on hard times. Over the past decade or so -- with one or two exceptions -- we haven't been very good. In fact, sometimes our boys have been downright awful. This seems to be one of those years as the Chiefs have netted 1 solitary victory out of 5 games played.

When a team has a woeful record, it is not uncommon for the fair-weather fans to blame the quarterback. After all, he is supposed to be the leader of the offense and, on many teams, is the highest paid player. So, when things are going badly, the quarterback often becomes the scapegoat.

The starting quarterback for the Chiefs is Matt Cassel. Matt's not having a good year and a lot fans have been calling for his head on a platter. Yesterday afternoon they got their wish...sort of.

You see, Matt got his bell rung when he was sandwiched by two big defensive players from the Baltimore Ravens. He went down in a heap and he stayed on the ground. What happened next really raised the ire of one of his teammates, offensive tackle Eric Winston. I think you will get a really good idea of what happened by reading Winston's post-game comments (you can watch a video of his comments here).

"We are athletes," Winston said. "We are not gladiators. This isn't the Roman Coliseum. People pay their hard-earned money to come in here, and I believe they can boo. They can cheer. They can do whatever they want. We're lucky to play this game. A game. It's hard economic times, and they still pay the money to do this, but when somebody gets hurt there are long-lasting ramifications to the game we play -- long-lasting ramifications.

"I've already come to the understanding that I won't live as long because I play this game, and that's OK. That's a choice I've made. That's a choice all of us have made. But when you cheer somebody getting knocked out, I don't care who it is, and it just so happened to be Matt Cassel, it's sickening. It's 100 percent sickening, and I've been in some rough times on some rough teams, and I've never been more embarrassed in my life to play football than in that moment right there."

I agree with him! The very idea of cheering for someone to be injured is grotesque and the fans that did this should be ashamed of themselves.