Apologies to my many non-sporting readers, but I have to explore something just a bit here. 

My friend Joe took this pic. (Photo by Joe Imel/Bowling Green Daily News)

As of this writing, the NFL Playoffs have seen every single home team lose to their lesser-ranked visitor… the barely-in Eagles (No. 6 seed out of possible 6) just trounced the Super Bowl champion and No. 1 seed Giants, and yesterday my beloved No. 1 Titans dominated nearly every portion of their game against No. 6 Baltimore, but made a crucial mistake every time they got close to scoring, losing 13-10 — the exact score of their regular-season win over Baltimore, who themselves dominated that game only to lose at the last moment.

This is the housing crisis! This is broken-home syndrome. After this season — and especially if the No. 2 Steelers lose tonight’s game to the No. 5 Chargers and their 5-foot-6, 180-pound running back Darren Sproules — we may have to retire the notion of “homefield advantage.” Fans will give up their season tickets, instead buying maybe two games’ worth of tickets and travel fare to out-of-town games. Stadiums will become war zones, with home-team fans simply surrounding the grounds but not going in, taunting and throwing beer at those out-of-town fans making their way into the gates to see their visiting team knock the socks off the homers.

It’s entirely anti-logical… why, this postseason, is every team blowing the advantage of positive fans, amped up that their team is one of 12 (out of 32) in the playoffs?

UPDATE: So I was wrong about the Steelers… maybe homefield advantage works a bit better when the visitor is from sunny San Diego and your locale has blistering cold and constant snowfall.

Tags: Joe Imel, Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers, Tennessee Titans

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 2.39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.