Three NFL Playoff Games Not Selling Out is a National Embarrassment

PFT – The Colts have announced that 4,500 unsold tickets remain in advance of Thursday’s extended deadline to sell all non-premium seats. If the tickets aren’t sold by 4:35 p.m. ET, the game will be blacked out in and around Indianapolis. The first 24-hour extension resulted from the New Year’s Day holiday. In theory, another extension is possible… Potential blackouts also are looming in Cincinnati and Green Bay. If all three games aren’t televised locally, the wild-card weekend will have more blackouts than all 17 weeks of the regular season, combined. The fans in those three cities deserve to see the games. If the NFL won’t lift the blackout policy for the postseason, then the billionaires who own the teams should buy the extra tickets… Also inevitable is a potential eruption from Mt. Irsay, who surely is dismayed at the lack of local support for his team.

This is re-goddamn-diculous.  Seriously, I weep for my country that supposedly major, NFL-franchise-worthy cities can’t get their shit together enough to sell out a stadium with their teams three measly wins away from going to a Super Bowl.  I mean, this isn’t the MLS playoffs or the Winter X Games or some damned thing.  This the NF friggin L playoffs.  They’re supposed to mean something.  It’s our cultural identity as Americans. But these frauds in Indy, Cincinnati and even Green Bay (et tu, cheeseheads) are treating these games like they’re the Phoenix Coyotes at Columbus Blue Jackets. And this a national embarrassment.

More importantly, it speaks to the kind of support the Patriots get.  Douchebags who don’t know what they’re talking about still talk like New England didn’t even know we had a football team until the Pats won the Super Bowl in ’01.  But the fact is they’ve sold out every single game since Mr. Kraft saved the team from moving to St. Louis back in 1994.  Gillette is a nightmare to get to.  Getting out is even worse.  For a good 1/3 of the games every year, the conditions are miserable.  But the place is banged out game after game after game.  Consider that horrible deluge last week against Buffalo that 70,000 rode out with no reprieve.  Or the playoff game I was at ten years ago against Tennessee, the coldest game in Patriots history where my cousin bought a Poland Springs and it froze solid before he got to his seat.  But there wasn’t an empty seat in the place.  We endure the hardships of being Patriots fans because having a team in the NFL playoffs is precious and meant to be valued.  And it’s a scandal that any other fanbase would take such a sacred thing for granted.  So yeah, go ahead and throw a fit about it, Irsay.  Just remember it was your miserable, black-hearted father who moved the team out to Indy in the dead of night like the coward he was.  Serves you right.  @JerryThornton1