LSU fans still need to vent…

 The ad above ran in the Sunday edition of the Baton Rouge newspaper “The Advocate”. LSU fans are still looking for outlets to express their frustrations and message boards just aren’t cutting it.  It amazes me that this story had little traction in the local media on Monday, it was a slow sports day in Louisiana and it was barely mentioned on local sports shows. The ad shows the deterioration of the newspaper, had this ad appeared on 2theadvocate.com website, this might have gone viral…

The ad lavishes the accomplishments that Jarrett Lee had during the 9-0 start he had as the LSU starting quarterback. It doesn’t come right out and rips the team or Les Miles, but has a very strong smell of passive-aggressiveness. The ad even give thanks to how Lee handled the last month of the season, which I guess is to be commended. The questions is the ad fair to print?

It seems like this past football season, fans have felt a sense on entitlement never seen before in the media. Not just with LSU fans.  Early in the Denver Bronco’s season, fans paid for a billboard to go up in the city pleading for the team to play Tim Tebow. With or without the help of the advertisement, Tebow eventually became the starter and had a remarkable year. At what point did fans feel like they could not only watch and root for their team, but to get there message out there for the masses to see? Is it the rising cost in the price of tickets, or is it the fact that with the internet, fans are exposed to more information about their team than ever?

College football allows fans to not only watch players improve from their freshman year till their senior year, but they also see the 17 and 18 year old boys turn into men. We treat these players like they are family and when they are not treated right, we defend them blindly…but why? We do not know the player or the coaches. We simple read stories about them through the media and form an opinion about them with only a small scope of information.

I get where the ad is coming from. As sports fans there are two types of athletes we pull for. The first is the five-star, uber-talented player. Keeping this topic LSU related, remember watching Jamarcus Russell? He clearly was the most talented quarterback in my lifetime at LSU and I always watched in amazements at some of the throws he could make. At time it was only his dumb decisions on and off the field that made him seem human, but it was fun to watch him thrown it around the field. The other type of guy is similar to Jarrett Lee. This player kind of looks like us, runs like us and struggles like us. We pull for him as he tries to improve and when he does, fans are elated. Lee was able to turn it around during his senior season, but for whatever reason the coaching staff decided to go in another direction. They did not give us the story book ending we were all craving with Lee, but they are paid to make these decisions, and we pay to watch the product they put on the field.  

And that is the story. There isn’t any conspiracy, no other quarterback had naked pictures of Les Miles or his family. It was a coaching decision and that is it. The time to stop beating this dead horse is now. We all need to move on from the 2011 season and begin to enjoy the offseason and the potential of next year’s team. Let’s go back to being fans and fans only, not cheerleaders in our own agenda. This is only my opinion, what’s yours?

Tags: Fans, Feature, Jarrett Lee, LSU Football, popular, SEC