Philadelphia sports fans bring a certain type of passion that no other fanbase poses; however, Philly fans have gotten a lot of hate over the years from the media, as well as opposing teams.
There have been incidents over the years involving Philly fans, but that happens to every sports franchise. Fans of Philadelphia get a bad reputation for no reason. The media still brings up the snowballs-at-Santa fiasco that happened in 1968. There have been far worse incidents involving fans that the media tend to forget about.
For example, there was the Malice at the Palace in 2004 when fans threw beer at Indiana Pacers players, resulting in a full out brawl. Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson went into the crowd after a fan threw beer at them on the court. This was one of the ugliest events in sports history as players and fans were fighting in the crowd.
As the Pacers players were walking off the court, all the fans threw trash at them; however, even after this ugly event, no one is talking about how awful the Indiana fans are.
In 2002, two fans attacked Tom Gamboa, the first base coach for the Kansas City Royals at that time. The two fans left permanent damage to the hearing of Gamboa, and the one fan had a pocket knife on him during the incident. Events like these never get brought up during the discussion of fan brutality.
However, the common consensus is that Philadelphia fans are the worst fans of all sports.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
There has been many times that I thought fans were disrespectful; however, Philly fans do not deserve the amount of hate that is given.
There is a CBS article calling Eagles fans the “absolute worst,” which is extreme.
There are multiple articles bashing the fans of Philadelphia for events that happen with every professional sports fanbase. All the players that play for a Philadelphia sports franchise know that these fans are the best in sports.
The medias portrays these fans as some evil monsters, but these fans are the best fans in all of sports, supporting one of the best sport cities in America.
Jason Kelce, all-pro center for the Philadelphia Eagles, commented on the fact that Philadelphia is hated during his speech at the Eagles championship parade. Kelce screamed a chant that went: “We are from Philly, f****** Philly. No one likes us and we don’t care.”
This chant embraces what Philly fans are about; everyone hates Philadelphia fans, but we simply don’t care. Philadelphia fans travel all over the country to see our beloved teams play.
Earlier this week, there was an Eagles chant that broke out at the Flyers and the Golden Knights game in Las Vegas.
StubHub announced that majority of Super Bowl tickets sold came from the Pennsylvania. There was reportedly over 2 million people at the parade that filled the streets of Philadelphia to celebrate the Eagles first Super Bowl.
Philadelphia fans are dedicated.
Philadelphia fans are like no other.
People may love us. People do hate us.
Nevertheless, we don’t care.
