Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Southern Un-Hospitality

This last weekend I visited Tennessee (The Volunteer State-What are they volunteering for? - Who knows). We (Bri, Amanda, Adam and myself) drove down to Jackson to see our good friends Dylan and Marabeth. Then on Saturday we drove over to Nashville to see the Red Wings play the Nashville Predators. And then all hell broke loose.....the fans at the Sommet(soh-May) Center are crazy and rude. As you may have heard -The Wings got wasted at the game for a 8-0 shutout. I'm making no excuses for them, but they were on the second night of back-to-back games and they had to travel. Anyways, The fans were rude. After every goal they chanted:

"Coooonnnkklin.....Coooonnnkklinn......You Suck! You Suck!"

I felt like I was back at a Ferris State college hockey game. Every time that the announcers said: "Red Wings are on the power play" the crowd would chant "And they still suck!".

On top of all of that- the video team at the Sommet Center kept playing pre-made videos of the Wings bench with really old men in their uniforms and on respirators.

I did a little research on the chants and found out that the fans have given themselves the name "Section 303" and "Cellblock 303"and the have a myspace page that directs the fans on what the official chants are. Here's an excerpt from the page:


GOALIE TAUNTS:

# 1 (Goalies two syllable first or last name, followed by "Lo-ser!")
OS-GOOD: LO-SER!
OS-GOOD! LO-SER!
OS-GOOD! LO-SER! (repeat until psychiatric help needed)

# 2 (when clock hits :30 mark at beginning of Second Period to opposition goalie now positioned
immediately beneath the Cellblock)
"HEY, (GOALIES LAST NAME), WELCOME TO HELL!"

# 3 (when clock hits 19:30 mark at end of Second Period)
"HEY, (GOALIES LAST NAME), WEVE SEEN YOU UP CLOSE
YOU SUCK EVEN WORSE
COME BACK AND WE SHALL TAUNT YOU A SECOND TIME!"

# 4 (After Predators score and play resumes, rotate your arm above your head on each "swiss":)
"SWISS, SWISS, SWISS CHEESE
(GOALIES NAME) IS FULL OF HOLES!" (repeat 3 times)


All I can say is: Wow (and shake my head in disappointment that the human race is inherently evil)

If, and when, The Predators come to the Joe Louis arena. Our fans do not chant at their goalie, our fans do not have stupid disrespectful chants and our fans DO NOT have FANG FINGERS!!

Watch the video below - the very very cheesy "finger thing" that Taylor Swift does at the end of the video is what the Predator fans call "Fang Fingers" - the entire stadium does it when the Predators go on a power play. And then I laugh for ten minutes.

Here's the video

1 comment:

  1. That's what happens at games of all kinds. It is group thinking that drives this. It has nothing to do with the South or the North. I have been to many games in Michigan where similar things happened a lot in all types of arenas and for all sorts of sports. Sorry to inform you of my personal experiences. It is dumb that they are rude. I agree on that.

    ReplyDelete