loyalty. It also took the Ravens 22 years to need do any real ticket marketing beyond loving the people they already had in the fold – oh, and winning. As Joe Flacco always points out: “We win a lot of football games around here!”
I know this much: if the Baltimore Ravens have two more parades here in the upcoming 22 years it will be considered a very good era of professional football in the Land of Pleasant Living.
But I’m getting the feeling that we’re not going to see 22 more years of “honeymoon” terms and PSL commitments and full stadiums here for the football team based on the price, temperature and the current malaise and all of the issues that go beyond Baltimore or the Ravens or the current problems within the NFL and our country, politics, patriotism, race and loyalty.
We’re all being forced to pick a side.
My side is to go to Ravens games and support the team because it makes me happy. And other than Terrell Suggs spraying bleach on his wife, I have no current beefs with the franchise. It’s never perfect but I like my life as an NFL fan, sports radio and media host and role as an unapologetic Baltimore supporter and critic. I know and like many of the players on the team. I can say this for certainty in the aftermath of the Ray Rice fiasco: the Baltimore Ravens are always searching very hard for better people in their organization. The current clubhouse is relatively douchebag free and I can’t always say that. There are a lot of honorable people, good Americans, good human beings in that organization. So, I’ll defend them for that because I know the character and the integrity of many of the people associated from the top down.
In many cases, these are the kind of people you’d want to be in your family – or your foxhole. And they are a football team for crissakes! There’s a lot of “teamwork” and “sacrifice” built into it.
The frightening part of this backlash against the Baltimore Ravens franchise is the ferocity of the people who suddenly want the team to fold up, go away and the NFL to go out of business.
Baltimore needs the Ravens into the foreseeable future – especially as it appears that our community will continue to shrink and be usurped into a giant metropolis between Richmond and Boston over the next quarter of a century.
But you can’t have people getting randomly murdered downtown and expect Ravens fans – or Orioles fans – from the suburbs to drive in for night games and feel safe. One murder keeps 100,000 people away from Baltimore. That’s just a fact and it’s affected every business in our city in a very real, tangible way – spiritually, psychologically, economically and into the future unless our community solves this issue that is much perception as reality.
And no one likes the vibe or wants to be a part of an empty stadium. Well, except the Orioles that one time…
Nothing creates more panic at the disco than when there is a line to get in. Right now, there is no line to get into the Ravens purple party and it doesn’t appear to be
