An Ending To The Romance In Sports

Remember when sports was more about gamesmanship and honor more than it was about money? Neither do I.

But one would hope that the fans of a team would be treated as friendlies and not some random gadabout who owes you some cash.

The Washington Post is reporting the plight of several Redskins season ticket holders who got smashed by the economic downturn and now can no longer afford the season tickets they signed up to get. It's understandable. This is the worst downturn since the depression, people are going to have trouble and going to football games probably isn't the wisest use of their money.

But Redskins owner Dan Snyder wants his money, so what does he do? He sues these hard luck ticket holders into bankruptcy.

These fans did sign a contract when they bought the ticket packages and by the letter of the law, they are required to pay their money to the Redskins. It's hard to argue against that even though some of the people didn't even read the contracts thoroughly.

But maybe, just maybe there is an unsaid give and take between a team and it's community of supporters. Fans help fund stadiums with their tax dollars because they want the team to stay around. God forbid the owners of these teams should exercise some shred of loyalty back to those supporters.

The Redskins have plenty of season ticket holders and even more fans are in line to buy packages. But when you see a team treating it's fans like this, it destroys any romance a person may have being a "celebrated" fan of the team and drops the harsh reality that some sports owners see you as a piggy bank more than a community supporter of their organization.