Hanging with The Prince of NY and @drc_two1 tonight. You already know what they think of the jersey! #GIANTS #0 #4 pic.twitter.com/zQZZewpg9b
— LPG - Joe (@LicensePlateGuy) October 7, 2014
The tweet above from New York Giants uber-fan Joe Ruback, a.k.a 'License Plate Guy' has drawn the ire of Philadelphia Eagles fans over at Bleeding Green Nation, and probably elsewhere.
The jersey itself is all in fun. Ruback, or any Giants fan for that matter, can express their hatred for the Eagles any way they please. There is nothing wrong with that. Fans of rival teams should smack-talk each other in advance of a big game, and when one team can Lord the 'Super Bowl' advantage over the other why shouldn't they? I know that as a New York Yankees fan I rubbed '1918' in the faces of Boston Red Sox fans for a loooong time. Now that things have changed I just have to quietly take what justifiably comes back at me.
A fans' right to poke fun at, or smack-talk, the opposition is not the point.
The point is, what the heck were Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Prince Amukamara doing putting themselves in position to be seen across every social media platform known to man poking fun at a rival? Especially a rival that the Giants play this week. Not to mention one that went to the playoffs last season while the Giants did not, and one that is a game ahead of the Giants this season.
Amukamara seems like a great guy, but I don't know about his media judgment. You all remember the Bar Mitzvah video, right? That didn't look good for Prince, and neither did this.
As for DRC, maybe he should remember that he was part of a couple of embarrassingly bad Eagles teams that were supposed to erase that "0" from the record books.
Some trash-talk between sides is inevitable, and we know Antrel Rolle of the Giants started the verbal warfare this week. That's to be expected. Players should know better, however, than to let themselves get used in this way.
As for Ruback, he's a great guy, everybody knows how much he loves the Giants and he has every right to profess that love. Dragging players into poking fun at opposing teams, though, is way over the line. That's a fan injecting himself into a rivalry the wrong way, putting players in a compromising position and providing bulletin board material for an opponent.
Biggest problem with License Plate Guy? As much as we know he loves Big Blue, his fan-dom seems to have gone away from being about the Giants to these days being more about promoting and drawing attention to himself. Shame on DRC and Amukamara for feeding into that.
Simply put, it shouldn't happen.