Saturday, June 13, 2015

Banner day

Social media is a mystical creature. On the one hand, it can shed light and heat where light and heat are most needed but have rarely penetrated. On the other ...

Well. On the other, it has this amazing (and annoying) power to make a thing out of something that's not a thing and never has been.

And so now comes all this blather about the Indianapolis Colts raising a banner in Lucas Oil Stadium that says "2014 AFC Finalist," even though they were rogered 45-7 by the Patriots in the AFC title game. Someone tweeted or Facebooked or otherwise internet-ed a photo of that banner, and suddenly people were tsk-tsking about how absurd it was to be celebrating such a colossal failure.

One teensy, tiny problem with that.

According to Colts COO Pete Ward, the Colts have been hanging those sorts of banners since, um, 1987, the first year they made the playoffs in Indianapolis. As a matter of fact, two AFC Finalist banners celebrating their 1995 and 2003 appearances already hang in the Luke.

Why no one never noticed that before is a mystery, except that people tend to be inattentive to detail. But now photos of the offending banner are everywhere, and so is the sneering. A good deal of it, as you might imagine, is coming from New England.

Where the Patriots won the Super Bowl again this year.

And where they also raise banners.

And where they raised a "16-0 Regular Season Record" banner to commemorate the 2007 season, even though the Pats got beat in the Super Bowl that year.

Yo, pot. Meet kettle.

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