Hey Minnesota and Millie, We’re Sorry Not Sorry

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“Being so bad got me feelin’ so good
Showing you up like I knew that I would
Baby, I’m sorry (I’m not sorry)”
-Demi Lovato (Sorry Not Sorry“)

Walking home from the 2017-18 NFC Championship game I stumbled across two young guys carrying a sign down Broad Street. Signs were everywhere, but this one was different. People cheered this sign when they saw it. It was the F*CK MILLIE sign.

I placed #F*CKMILLIE in the tweet because that the was impromptu agreement I made with the guys.

ME: “Can I take your picture?”

THEM: “Sure…just hashtag #F*CKMILLIE…hashtag F*CKMILLIE

So I did. I posted “Sign of the night on Broad Street” because, in my observations, no sign received as boisterous a response as the sheet that read “F*CK MILLIE.” Since that tweet and a pickup by Deadspin and Daily Snark, I’ve been tweeted at for three days by Vikings fans telling how Eagles fans are nothing, but “Pieces of sh*t.”

Let’s start with something that is clearly obvious. Nobody wishes harm or ill-will towards Millie. Philly sports fans are intense, but were not savages–the overwhelming majority at least. Are there some asshats? ABSOLUTELY. Every fan base has them. Actually, as of 2016, the Eagles ranked 10th in average fan arrests at games. The innocent, poor Vikings fans also found themselves in the top 15 at #14. The top 15 can all be seen HERE.

This outrageous Eagles fan behavior story is way overblown because of one video. There were 68,000 fans at the Linc and a handful of morons. I spent four hours tailgating, saw numerous groups of Vikings fans, people tailgating, and witnessed dozens of people in Vikings gear walking about with no major issues aside from people BOOING them, telling them to go home, or flipping them off. I saw nothing to call the police about. In fact, Philly police are often undercover in opposing team’s gear at the Linc looking for the asshats and we saw no one arrested unlike past games where I saw Philly cops in Giants jerseys arresting idiot Eagles fans.

We had two Vikings fans in our section and the worst they experienced was our section doing a SKOL chant to mock them.

And yes, fans threw beers at the Vikings team bus and pounded on its windows. That’s not cool, but who is the logistical genius that decided that it was a good idea to drive the Vikings team bus up Broad Street, through the heart of the city’s Eagles’ celebration? That person should be reassigned.

 

Back to Millie. This F*CK MILLIE sign had nothing to do with the sweet woman Millie Wall. If she walked through the Linc she would’ve gotten high-fives and cheers. If she was tailgating, we would’ve given her a beer or her favorite drink, a screwdriver.

Unfortunately, Millie became the symbol of the disrespect that the Vikings, Vikings’ fans, Vegas, and NFL displayed toward the Philadelphia Eagles.

No one expected the Vikings to lose, especially not their fans who may be the most whiny and sorest losers ever known in the NFL. They are still complaining about Eagles fans, planning ways to exact revenge when Eagles’s fans head to Minneapolis, and are even calling Boston sportsradio stations to voice their now-support for the Patriots. Get over it. Your team got its ass handed to itself on national TV. Deal with it.

The Vikings definitely didn’t take the Eagles seriously. They looked like they didn’t prepare at all for the Eagles and were already working on a game-plan for the Patriots. The Eagles were an afterthought.

Vegas had the Eagles, the top seed in the NFC, underdogs at home.

The NFL accidentally put out promotional social media posts for Super Bowl LII featuring the Vikings and the Patriots.

And then there was Millie. She was a great story about a 99 year-old fan who would love to see her Vikings win a Super Bowl in their home stadium. FOX did a piece on Millie and the NFL used her as a photo-op for good publicity when Commissioner Roger Goodell gave Millie tickets to Super Bowl LII.

Fair enough. Great feel-good story. There was one problem. The Vikings weren’t in the Super Bowl YET!

I may be mistaken, but Goodell doesn’t regularly go to every Super Bowl host team and give their older fans tickets to the big game. Let’s be real. This was a story because Millie was going to be able to see her team play in a Super Bowl in her hometown.

Whether intentional or not Millie came represent league-wide disregard for an Eagles team without Carson Wentz behind center. She personified an assumption that the Vikings would enter Lincoln Financial Stadium and hand the Eagles a crushing, season-ending defeat. It didn’t matter that Goodell handed her tickets before the Vikings barely beat the Saints. The entire story fueled the Eagles underdog narrative.

The sign F*CKMILLIE came to symbolize a F*ck You to the Vikings, Vegas, NFL pundits, the NFL, and Roger Goodell.

Millie should’ve never been dragged into this and endure some fandom verbal/signage shrapnel because of it. It’s not her fault that Goodell and FOXSports couldn’t wait until after the Vikings were in the Super Bowl to hand her tickets to the big game. Much to all their dismay, the Eagles led by Nick Foles and Doug Pederson are in Super Bowl LII. That’s not as sexy a story as the Patriots trying to win their sixth versus a Vikings team playing in front of their home crowd and Millie.

The powers that be made this happen. They drew first blood. They disregarded and disrespected the Eagles. Then the Minneapolis media ran stories that Eagles fans were basically the equivalent a gang. That just fueled the disrespect fire. Vikings fans desecrating the Rocky Statue didn’t help.

We’re sorry Millie was pulled into this, but we’re not sorry we stuck it to the Vikings, their fans and media, the NFL, and Goodell.

So, to Millie, as Demi Lovato says, we are sorry, not sorry.