Giants Fans Hardly Impressive
September 25th, 2009
Joe knows Giants fans are extraordinarily overrated
It seems like 99 percent of the time Joe loves reading eye-RAH! Kaufman’s solid work for the Tampa Tribune. It also doesn’t hurt that eye-RAH!’s one of the coolest guys working in the local fourth estate.
But Joe’s eyebrow was raised (sort of like Derrick Brooks used to do) when he read eye-RAH!’s loving article today about the allegedly devoted Giants fan base.
Though Joe loved reading eye-RAH!’s article, Joe can’t quite swallow the premise that the Giants have such a devoted fanbase.
Joe is not as impressed by Giants fans selling out their stadium for decades, or that Giants fans are present on the road. This doesn’t mean there’s some special fan base up there. The Giants are simply drawing from a metropolitan area upwards of 18 million people that happens to be the wealthiest in the country.
It’s strictly a numbers game. The Giants’ market dwarfs the combined metropolitan areas of the NFC South teams.
Yes, Giants fans historically have kept their tickets through tough seasons, but that doesn’t mean they showed up for games. Check the stats. The NFL used to publish no-show numbers for every game.
Oh, look, Joe has found a Giants beat writer who wrote just last year about scores of empty seats — in September no less!– replete with a photo. Some fan base, huh?
Joe fondly remembers performing with his high school marching band at halftime of a Giants-Cardinals game at Giants Stadium in 1982. Maybe the stadium was one-half full that day. Maybe.
On top of all this, New York is not even a football town, Neil Best of Newsday has written about this several times. So why should anyone be impressed with Giants fan? Half of them would skip watching Sunday’s game against the Bucs in exchange for a Yankees playoff ticket.
It’s a baseball town first. Arguably a basketball town second. College football is literally an afterthought (as Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News told Joe during a media function at February’s Super Bowl in Tampa, “College football? What’s that?”). And the Giants are almost completely on the back burner in their backyard now, with the Yankees front and center and the Jets winning their Super Bowl last week against Bill Belicheat, behind a new coach and new quarterback.
Giants fans aren’t worth the paper the Tribune is printed on.
September 25th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
That’s because everyone that owned those empty seats moved down to florida…
September 25th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
You were in the marching band, Joe? What’d you play?
September 25th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Joe here,
Now remember, there are two guys on JoeBucsFan.com who write as “Joe.” So only this “Joe” was in the band. The other one makes fun of those in the band.
Anyway …did one year of marching band on the clarinet before retiring to the regular band. Needed those Saturday’s for actually playing ball.
September 26th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Giants fans were forced with 20 years of terrible football from 1964 to 1984 the best way to get Giant tickets in the late 70″s was just show up at the Medowlands buy them for less than half price in the parking lot, you have to remember that this is the only franchise the comissioner stepped in and named a GM George Young to run the Giants because old man Mara and his son were such bitter enemies the Giants fans can thank Young for bringing the Giants back to glory. I know i went and got the tickets in the lot and watched the planes fly over the stadium with banners trailing and messages against Mara. Now for the last 9 years a total Bucs supporter and ticket holder