It may not show, but rest assured we feel your pain

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/08/2010 (5827 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The following is an email I received shortly after we fell at home to 2-5 for the 2010 season. The message was edited for space and content considerations.

Dear Doug: My wife and I have had season tickets for the past 17 years and the past few we kept thinking if we should keep them or not. With our tickets, we have to spend an extra $40-$50 a game on a babysitter. This, as you may well know, is hard-earned money and we expect to see the equivalent effort from the team we support year in and year out. Just watching some guys come off the field on the JumboTron is disappointing because they are showing no emotion at all. Myself, when I play hockey, I get pissed off and let people know if they are not doing their job well enough. At a professional level, I think they should be doing more of the same. Just want to pass along my frustration. Whether or not you think this is your responsibility is up to you. Thanks for being honest and a great leader in the community. Gary.

Thank you for the email, Gary. First and foremost, you should know that the players share in your frustration. Having lost some three games already this season by seven points or less, it would not have been too much of a stretch to have us at 5-2 at this juncture instead of the other way around, and then I’m sure your letter would have been one of satisfaction and not disappointment.

Though you were let down by our performance last year (as those of us that remain were, too) and currently feel the same way this season, I can honestly tell you that everyone I know in the organization appreciates the sacrifices fans make to attend games, and the hard-earned money it costs them to do so.

The thing that makes professional sports unique is that your successes and failures are very public, and there is a palpable difference in the air on Maroons Road when you are 2-5 and not 5-2. When you play for a community that is very much tapped into the pulse of its football team, we wear our record on our sleeves everywhere we go.

As to the lack of emotion you see on the JumboTron coming off the field, I can only speak for myself and tell you different players react differently to adverse situations. Personally, I have always felt if you have the energy to rant and rave and be radically demonstrative after an unsuccessful series on the field, that energy would have been better spent between the hashes executing the offence or defence than on the sideline putting on a show for the fans. I know for myself, if my gap responsibility is exploited or if I am losing more one-on-one battles than I am winning, no one is more aware of it than I, and I internalize it and become resolute to redeem myself whenever the next opportunity arises.

When you have other interests than sports, like in high school or college, you may require additional motivation to extract a supreme effort from players with questionable commitment. But when you are paid to prepare and play only 18 games every regular season, it is implied that everything be left on the field each and every week.

Unfortunately, effort cannot always account for other variables in football like timing, physical assets of strength, speed and athleticism, mental fortitude and mistakes. Furthermore, the game of football is extremely specialized and complicated. If you want to call out a player or demand an immediate explanation for something that just happened, you (a) better have a full understanding of that player’s responsibility on any given call; (b) you better have seen the footage and film and know exactly what happened; and (c) you better be prepared to take a hard look at yourself too, for no one player is immune to being beaten or making a mistake.

The thing you can rest assured of, and that has held true in my decade on this team, is that this franchise will not rest until the on-field product is back living up to its former championship standards. Just over a third of the way into the season, we have already seen the outcome of unsatisfactory performances with reprimands, demotions and outright releases.

Until we, the players, can start to string together more consistent efforts and play complete games, we are all too aware that our positions in this already very volatile industry are hanging by a thread as we approach the remaining 11 games.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.