Ravens games this season:
Let’s start with the obvious – it’s not cheap to go to a Ravens game and it’s no longer urgent. Plenty of tickets exist on the secondary market, many at less than face value.
The offense stinks and the team hasn’t made the playoffs in three years. These are clearly tied together but winning football equals excitement. It’s not Cleveland around here but the local fans have become accustomed to a Super Bowl contender. This year’s version of the Ravens has never quite felt capable of winning a title or being dominant – and that can be said about the last three years of football.
The fan base and original PSL owners are aging. It’s been 22 years. As much as the older generation who endured Sundays without the NFL was almost beholden to buy licenses and tickets a generation ago to be a part of the excitement, somehow their children don’t see the games as a “must attend” or a “place to be and be seen” the way their forefathers did from passing the torch of grandparents who told stories of Johnny Unitas and Lenny Moore and Art Donovan.
Anyone who has ever watched a game on television realizes that replays, slow motion, commentary to explain it all and the ability to watch ALL of the games and NFL Red Zone will tell you that the biggest problem teams have in terms of Sunday competition is competing with the big screen TV, warm bathroom, cheap cold beer and quality food that America’s man caves provide without the hassle – or expense– of coming to stadium.
I go to all of the Ravens games – home and away – and the NFL stadium experience is choppy at best. With security concerns and terrorism, just getting into any stadium with tens of thousands of other fans is a drag most weeks. Plus, everyone has come in contact with the universal asshole in the upper deck wearing the other team’s jersey and looking to fight all of South Baltimore after the sixth beer.
Then, there’s the infamous Wembley Knee, which I witnessed at the 35-yard line in London back in September. I’ll be addressing that at length in Part 2 of this series as that is clearly the Ghost of Baltimore Football Present.
The result of fans staying away is obvious to more than just your eyeballs on a television screen. The lost revenue for my city is real. It affects downtown Baltimore on game days, hotels, restaurants, the city tax base and the conviviality and fellowship surrounding why you’d want to have an NFL team as a centerpiece of your metropolis. The secondary market is flooded with tickets. Those not using their tickets are also hurting the value of their own PSLs, which are at a rock bottom these days.
And this Saturday, here comes a visit from the former Baltimore Colts – a perfect segue to the ghost of Baltimore’s football past, which I’ll be handling today. Parts 2 and 3 and the ghosts of our professional football present and future will be delivered in the coming days leading up to Christmas.
It is not lost on me that the team of Bob Irsay’s son and our community’s stolen horseshoe and blue and white uniforms are coming to Baltimore to attempt to wreck the Ravens season and playoff hopes. The Colts head coach (and my friend via leukemia miracles) Chuck Pagano needs to win games to keep his job in an era marred by the inherent handicap it becomes when your franchise quarterback can’t get on the field. You simply can’t win. Andrew Luck – despite his last name – has not had good luck with health, which has been a recurring theme around the NFL this season.
The Baltimore Colts drafted a franchise quarterback in 1983 with the first pick in the draft after being the worst team in the NFL in 1982. His name was John Elway. You kids can Google the history of how that worked out and I’ll be chatting with some elder statesmen about the rivalry on the radio this week and how it’s aged a little more like vinegar than fine wine.
This Saturday there will be no Irsay dummies in the upper deck, no burning of Big Bob, no “Irsay Sucks” chants and no longer much said about the pain and civic agony of losing our football team on March 28, 1984 when the Mayflower vans pirated our football franchise off to Indianapolis. Clearly, you have to be 40 years old or older to even remember that pain. But I assure you that as much as I buried that sword long ago (read more here), when I see those once-majestic blue and white uniforms of Bert Jones and my youth come onto a field in Baltimore as they have a handful of times over the years with Peyton Manning and far more formidable squad, it’s means a little extra to me.
The Baltimore Colts broke my heart and made my father cry. And that pain endured for 13 long years and many Sundays of civic emptiness that a modern citizen here wouldn’t understand because the Ravens have played every Sunday in
