Well.. If this is true. Ill find another team.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

I'll never understand the mindset of someone who switches teams. If you ask me they aren't a real fan to begin with. And the threats of switching are even more hilarious. Just switch, who cares.

I can see some people switching teams like when a new team forms and becomes your home team. I can also see when a team moves.

[SmootSmack]

What if we did fire Shanahan and hired Gruden and suddenly had an amazing turnaround. Would all the guys jumping off come back? As has been mentioned here already, if you're going to go just go.

[GhettoDogAllStars]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

What if we did fire Shanahan and hired Gruden and suddenly had an amazing turnaround. Would all the guys jumping off come back? As has been mentioned here already, if you're going to go just go.

Ha ha, great question. What if we win out, with a 30 point average margin of victory?

[BleedBurgundy]

Originally Posted by firstdown

I can see some people switching teams like when a new team forms and becomes your home team. I can also see when a team moves.

These are about the only scenarios I can understand. Part of me does get how a fanbase could feel so burned by a team that they just lose interest, but I would think that as soon as that team starts winning, they would always come back.

As a Skins fan, Sundays have largely sucked the past 15 years. While I recognize it's just a game, I can't deny that I have felt bummed and frustrated for hours after the final whistle. But it would feel completely false to just "pick another team." The fun is in being emotionally invested. I mean, do you just start rooting for the Patriots because they usually win? Seems kind of pathetic imo.

[over the mountain]

im not too worried about current skins fans leaving. i personally hate the majority of our fan base and see them (maybe mistakenly) as a bunch of financially secure, entitled whiny bitches exemplified by Dan Snyder.

if this team ever starts winning on a consistent basis, man i think i will be a quiet skins fan b/c this fan base is going to become the most obnoxious, crap talking, self-gratifying fan base ever. its going to be like cowboy fans x 5.

atleast now, all the egos of our well to do corporate fan base are held in check b/c of the product on the field. but man, just one 5-7 game win streak and watch out . . . this fan base is going to turn into a bunch of richards real soon.

what i am worried about is losing the next generation of skins fans.

[over the mountain]

Originally Posted by BleedBurgundy

These are about the only scenarios I can understand. Part of me does get how a fanbase could feel so burned by a team that they just lose interest, but I would think that as soon as that team starts winning, they would always come back.

As a Skins fan, Sundays have largely sucked the past 15 years. While I recognize it's just a game, I can't deny that I have felt bummed and frustrated for hours after the final whistle. But it would feel completely false to just "pick another team." The fun is in being emotionally invested. I mean, do you just start rooting for the Patriots because they usually win? Seems kind of pathetic imo.

as an skins and Os fan, i cant picture being a fan of a consistently successful team. i tell my lady not to worry, that one day when the skins or Os are back on top we will feel a joy that other bandwagon fans wont be able to elicit b/c they didnt live and die with the bad times.

i always envision watching the Os or skins win it all in a crowded bar, everyone is going bananas but im just sitting there smiling. im not the guy running or climbing up telephone polls waving a flag or crying, but im just sitting there smiling a deep sense of content wondering where all these so-called die hards came from.

idk, sports fan psychology is weird to me. i embrace the suck, mayeb living in this area it is a nature more than nuture thing.

[mooby]

Originally Posted by over the mountain

im not too worried about current skins fans leaving. i personally hate the majority of our fan base and see them (maybe mistakenly) as a bunch of financially secure, entitled whiny bitches exemplified by Dan Snyder.

if this team ever starts winning on a consistent basis, man i think i will be a quiet skins fan b/c this fan base is going to become the most obnoxious, crap talking, self-gratifying fan base ever. its going to be like cowboy fans x 5.

atleast now, all the egos of our well to do corporate fan base are held in check b/c of the product on the field. but man, just one 5-7 game win streak and watch out . . . this fan base is going to turn into a bunch of richards real soon.

what i am worried about is losing the next generation of skins fans.

Oh believe me they've already left. I've grown up in 3 different areas all within 25 miles of D.C. and most of my friends/kids that I went to school with root for other teams. I remember wearing my Arrington jersey in high school after Sundays in which the Redskins won a game and most kids were lookin at me like, rooting for the Redskins? what? is he crazy? I actually know more kids that root for the Cowboys (not because they like the Cowboys, because they hate the Redskins) Giants, and Eagles than I do that root for the Redskins. Mostly because when my generation was growing up, the Redskins have been a consistently bad team, meanwhile the Eagles have been hot shit for a decade now and other kids that picked the Cowboys hate us. But make no mistake, the majority of the Skins fan base is the older crowd that witnessed 3 SB wins.

[over the mountain]

Originally Posted by mooby

But make no mistake, the majority of the Skins fan base is the older crowd that witnessed 3 SB wins.

lol, yeah i fall into that crowd too. i used to be a dolphins fan when i was young (5-6) b/c my step dad's mother lived down in Fl and we would go down there, i liked the colors and dolphins. i then actually liked the broncos too b/c as a lil kid i watched elway do one of his last minute drives. i was alil kid, my real dad had died when i was about 3 so i never had a father figure instill the redskins in me even though i grew up in frederick then kensington.

then the skins made it to the superbowl, i was actually a broncos fan right before the SB kickoff. but watching the game with my brothers and step dad, i became a skins fan. then the 2nd quarter happened. ive been a skins fan ever since.

but it took a skins superbowl to give me an actual opportunity to watch a football game with my step dad (who isnt a big football guy, big golf and hockey).i dont know whether it was how well the skins did or the fact that for the first time i was watching my step dad root for a football team that did it. if not for the superbowl i dont know if i would be a skins fan b/c i dont think we would have watched a game together without the skins making it to a superbowl.

by the time the bills SB rolled around, i was die hard, allegiance chosen and sworn to.

i always envision fan bases being built by fathers like poster artmonk (forget the whole poster name) who has his lil son bleeding the BnG since birth. this past weekend my brothers wife said she was going to switch teams (jokingly), my 4 year old neice got real mad and said she cant and went on about the skins. it was awesome. but, idk, maybe thats just my disney vision of things i didnt have but hope to one day have the opportunity to do. my older brother is doing it right, artmonk is doing it right, one day soon ill get my chance and i wont need a freakin skins SB appearance to have any opportunity to sit down with my kids on any given sunday spending time with them and the redskins.

[celts32]

I was one of the ones who wanted Gruden over Shanny, but that ship has sailed. Shanny is the coach now and this is a rediculous rumor. What has happened to change Snyders opinion of Shannahan in 13 games? He can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t. He needs time...at least 3 years.

[sportscurmudgeon]

Originally Posted by GhettoDogAllStars

Ha ha, great question. What if we win out, with a 30 point average margin of victory?

There would be a lot of random drug tests administered if that happens...

[skinsguy]

Most of would be Redskins fans in my area switched to the Panthers when they came into the NFL in the 90's. I am technically much closer to Charlotte, NC than I am D.C., so it's basically Panthers territory now, although it used to be nothing but Redskins fans around and the Redskins games would always be shown on both the Virginia channels and the North Carolina channels. Not the case nowadays though.

Nowadays, I'd say Redskins fans are a lot fewer. I see more in my home town pulling for the Cowboys, Giants, Eagles, Steelers, and Patriots than I do the Redskins. Which is sad, but that's about how it is nowadays.

[SmootSmack]

I shared this with the mods back in July, some results of a survey done. Redskins fans are at an all-time low. Less than half a percent of the people polled said they were Redskins fans. That's the lowest it's been in over 10 years. Redskins have dropped to the 20th most popular pro sports teams; they're usually just outside the top 10.

[SkinDogg]

Originally Posted by mooby

But make no mistake, the majority of the Skins fan base is the older crowd that witnessed 3 SB wins.

Three Super Bowl wins, but FOUR appearances. Yes, SB18 was painful but I'd take the thrill and excitement of that season again any day. Especially today. And to accomplish all that within 10 years still leaves me breathless which is why I will always be a Redskins fan. Simply put, those years provided me, my family and friends some of the best memories of our lives - up there with births and graduations. So to bounce to another team? What?

That said, I'm not someone stuck in the past. I'm all about the future; I want to revere another coach as I do Joe Gibbs; I want to proudly wear jerseys of current players who actually show up to play. I want new memories, dammit. But the current team leaves me no choice. And so I remain with quiet hope, keep up with Warpath analysis, and make sure if I run into Gary Clark to offer my sincere thank you and shake his hand. The one that never dropped a ball.

But if you didn't have this, I understand taking off.

[MTK]

Clark never dropped a ball eh? Hate to rain on your parade but he didn't have the surest of hands and would get a case of the dropsies here and there.

[SkinDogg]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

Clark never dropped a ball eh? Hate to rain on your parade but he didn't have the surest of hands and would get a case of the dropsies here and there.

The operative word being "here and there" unlike the current receiving corp with their chronic case of dropsies.