Quote:
Originally Posted by WMH
I for one am on board. May work, may not, but either way they should be entertaining again. Just renewed our tickets, again, been there since day 1, and don't plan on going away any time soon.
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I'm still wavering. I haven't renewed and haven't decided if I will.
I admire your style of fandom, I really do. I'm not being disingenuous or snide or anything like that; it must be great to be able to embrace something wholly and without regard for its obvious flaws.
Wade Phillips inherited a terrible defense with a shocking lack of talent. What the hell is he supposed to say? Is he supposed to admit the truth? Hell no, he's supposed to say Hey, we can make anything work. That's a bluff. I mean, obviously.
Look, I never wavered in my own fandom through the 2005 season. I went to all the games and renewed my tickets without a second thought. I can handle losing. I'm a lifelong fan of Houston sports so that much should be painfully obvious. What I can't handle is being misled or lied to. Drayton McLane idiotically asks his players what they have done to be a champion. What he's done to be a champion is fire the best GM in the history of Houston sports and refuse to pay draft picks. The Astros are now in the MLB wilderness and comparable to the likes of Pittsburgh and Kansas City. I have no idea how long they'll stay where they are, but I'm pretty sure Ed Wade is not the person to lead them out. Anyway, as I was saying, I don't appreciate an owner pretending to want to win while in reality he obviously doesn't care. So I don't patronize the Astros financially. I watch all the games, sure, and I'll go to a game if I'm invited. But in terms of buying tickets, no thank you.
It's not as clear to me that McNair doesn't care about winning but I'm getting there. His retaining Kubiak is problematic. He knew that a lockout was a certainty and as I long imagined he didn't want to pay two head coaches to do nothing for a year. It's impossible for me to know whether he would have retained Kubiak if there hadn't been a lockout. I suspect he would have, but I'll never know.
My Texans fandom has matured over the decade. Like you I was once willing to overlook or minimize obvious deficiencies, obvious examples of organizational ineptitude. I find I can't do that anymore. It's a natural process I guess. But I am certain that the team cannot and will not win with Kubiak as the head coach, and I suspect that Rick Smith is equally inept although it's unclear who holds the final say in personnel matters. Smith insists he does but I don't believe it.
And last year was the first year that I didn't particularly enjoy going to the games. I like sitting in my seat and watching the game, sure, but everything else has sort of lost its luster for me. I guess my sobering up about the team has allowed me to see what was visible all along. Standing in an ugly parking lot in front of an ugly stadium at 11 am in unbearable heat dodging cigarette smoke wafting over from drunk, tattooed, chicken fried rednecks blasting Kid Rock or some goat roaping nonsense is just not as fun as it once was. Maybe I'm just getting old. Hell, I'm ten years older than I was when I started in on this idiocy.
Anyway, it looks like my 50 minutes is up. I'll see you next week.