Let’s play the blame game.

Who is at fault for the farcical melee that took place yesterday outside of Lincoln Financial Field? Is it Virginia native and Sixers forward Mike Scott, who wore a Redskins jersey to the game? Or is it Philadelphia Eagles fans?

By now you’ve probably seen the two different video clips showing the 6’8″ Scott throwing down with Birds fans at a parking lot tailgate. There are various accounts floating around, accusations that the fans called Scott a racial slur and other tidbits that can’t be 100% proven via the limited evidence we have. We do know that Mike was on his way to ERock’s 4th and Jawn tailgate, but that the altercation took place before he got there.

Therefore, our approach will be surface-level and purposefully vague, since we don’t have all the facts as of Monday morning.

As a blanket rule, Scott has to be smarter than this. He’s a professional athlete, a guy who will earn a few million dollars this season. You can’t be fucking fighting Eagles fans at a tailgate three weeks before training camp begins. Just walk away, even if you don’t want to, because it proves that you’re the better person and the bigger man. We all know that the Sports Complex parking lots feature some incredibly drunk and hostile people, since they’ve been imbibing for HOURS before the Birds actually hit the field.

Multiple things can be true here:

  1. the tailgating lots attract some drunken losers
  2. fans tried to warn Mike Scott about the drunken losers
  3. Mike went down there anyway, wearing his Redskins jersey, knowing what was probably going to happen
  4. everybody comes out of this looking bad

My specific problem here is with bullet point #2, and the fact that mature and responsible Eagles fans need to warn folks about the pathetic moron segment of our fan base. I keep reading stuff like this on Twitter:

“yeah well, you shouldn’t wear a Redskins jersey to an Eagles game!”

Yeah? Or else what? We’ll beat you up?

What does it say about us as a city when an opposing fan can’t wear their team’s jersey at the sports complex without the risk of having a beer thrown at them or someone screaming in their face? It doesn’t make for a “tough” or “intimidating” environment, it makes look like us boorish assholes. That’s what the North Dakota radio host was complaining about two years ago.

This is among the most comically sad things I’ve ever seen in my entire life, Eagles fans fighting a Philadelphia 76ers player. Think about how stupid that sentence reads. Even if Mike Scott were to go down there and rag Eagles fans and talk trash and instigate this nonsense, our response would be to…. fight fire with fire? Turn it into a sloppy drunken melee? It doesn’t prove anything about how passionate Philadelphia sports fans are, it proves how embarrassing and idiotic fringe supporters are, and it makes us all look bad by extension. Regardless of whether or not Mike Scott was warned, the FACT that he had to be warned at all is pretty pathetic.

Part of the problem is that the lots open really early down there, which means that by the time we get around to a 1 p.m. game, these people have been drinking for four to five hours. Of course, the vast majority of normal men and women are responsible and know how to hold their alcohol, but the 1% of idiots who can’t end up fighting each other instead, or taunting middle-aged female Vikings fans. If moving that early opening to 9 a.m. instead helps us control some of these isolated incidents, then maybe it’s worth talking about, but I also hate the idea of punishing responsible folks for the actions of idiots. I don’t want to take away anybody else’s fun because some losers decided to be losers.

Again, we don’t know what was said or what truly happened, but everybody looks bad here. Mike Scott looks bad. The Eagles fans look bad. And if opposing supporters can’t walk around wearing the jersey of the team they grew up rooting for, then what does it say about us? It says we as a collective fan base need to collar the piss-drunk jabronies and drag them into the 21st century.