Peter King Wants You to Hate Him to Prove Your Fandom

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me this Peter King interview from The Redskins Blog and he talks about fanbases who hate him or think King hates them:

"The fans of the Houston Texans are not passionate. The fans of the Arizona Cardinals are not passionate. I mean, I came out here this morning, and all you see are people who are just NUTTY about the Redskins. They're out of their minds. They're crazy."

Uh oh. I don't know what Cardinals fans think about that assessment of their fandom, but Houston Texan fans were non amused. The Texans as a newish team clearly don't have the largest fanbase in the league, but the ones they have don't take kindly to having their fandom questioned by someone who knows little about their team and has an unhealthy Favre obsession (visually illustrated by the above short Peter King YouTube labeled "Brett Favre's Testicles").

Some irate views from Texans blogtalk:

Matt Campbell from DGDB&D takes King's Hate = Passion thing to its repulsive conclusion, and unleashes an unholy hand grenade of vulgarity, profanity and assorted disgusting directives of what should happen to King's relatives and what he needs to do with various body parts in his "Open Letter to Peter King."

Here's how it begins with naughty stuff deleted for those of you who are sensitive flowers, but you really can't understand the uh, passion of it without reading it from its source:

"Dear ***-sucking ****master,

It has come to my attention that you don't think Texans fans are passionate. Apparently, we do not consume our team with the same joie de vivre with which you consume metric tons of frosting and Brett Favre's ******. I find this rather interesting-in the same way I find a monkey playing with his own **** interesting-mainly because it makes no sense whatsoever. You ******* ******."

Indeed. His co-blogger, bfd, provides this somewhat less profane followup in My Crush Note to Peter King:

"If your idea of evoking passion was to piss off the Texans Nation en masse, mission accomplished...you ****ing East coast hack ***hole."

Keith Weiland of InTheBullseye.com writes in his piece "I Think I Think Peter King Hates Us" (click on that link just for just the Bud Adams' smack alone) :

"I'm a Texan, Peter King, and you're not, so don't knock what you don't understand. Texans fans have suffered like no other NFL fan before them, and we're still here, as indestructible as ever. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, and the great fans of the Houston Texans are as strong as they come."

Chris from HoustonDiehards.com sums things up well in his Ten things I think I think about Peter King:

"I think you think Houston fans aren't passionate because you never gets death threats or hate mail from us. I wonder why that is? Could it be because you rarely find the space in your 8000-word columns about the Texans, but find plenty of room to discuss comfortable texture of Brett Favre's chest hair and your favorite coffee shops, all the while relaying about how the old lady in front of you can't seem to order a latte and operate her cell phone at the same time."

Seems to be a fair point given that King can't stop talking about Favre even when he made a promise to do so.

I opined a bit about this over at the I'm a Texan Club blogs. Nothing really worth excerpting here other than the general thought that it should be axiomatic that you don't start land wars in Russia or mess with folks from Texas.

Texans fans aren't just fans of one player, or fans from birth, or fair weather fans because the team hasn't had much fair weather. They chose to be fans of this team.

The Texans have sold out all their games since the beginning, their tailgating is already some of the best in the league, and training camp tickets were gone almost immediately. I was talking to a friend the other day who said that fans showed up for training camp at 4:00 am last Saturday to get player autographs. He showed up at 5:30 am and barely got a wristband before the cut off point.

As evidenced by his writing and words, Peter King clearly knows little about the Texans and even less about the fanbase so maybe it is good he rarely mentions them. If you feel like telling him what you think about his views on the Texans fanbase, catch him in his mailbag. Be sure to mention the word Favre a couple of times to get his attention. And what say you, Cardinal fans?