So Your Team is in the Super Bowl

That’s awesome, buddy. I am damn glad to hear it. I am super duper psyched for the state of your fandom. I remember seven years ago when my team won the Super Bowl and it was like the coolest thing ever. After the Bucs won, I head-butted my buddy Nick and he threw me through a screen door. And I didn’t even mind! Man that was good times.

Anyway, I understand that it’s hard to behave yourself under such crazy awesome circumstances and all that. I know because I couldn’t behave myself under similar circumstances but you know, at that time I was at my buddy’s house where everyone (more or less) accepted me as the weirdo I am but you people, well some of you are coming to my town and I just want to get a few things straight with you before you show up. The following is my advice to both Steeler Fans and Cardinal fans who will no doubt be coming to Tampa and making it harder to get a reservation at a restaurant over the course of the next few weeks.

Steeler Fans:
I know you people because you are fucking everywhere. You are loud and obnoxious and annoying and just generally insufferable during the regular season here in Tampa so I can only assume that you will be incredible assholes come the week of the Super Bowl and as such I have one important piece of advice: shut the fuck up.

Look, during the game you can feel free to scream and shout and stomp on puppies and babies alike (especially if you brought your own babies and puppies) but when the game is not going on and you’re wandering the streets of Ybor, drunk off your fat asses, we do not need to hear how great your team is because a) we don’t care and b) you don’t play for them. People of Tampa are known for being laid back and easygoing folks but we have lax gun laws down here and we will wax your Primanti Brothers sandwich sucking selves if you don’t stop screaming in our streets. (Note: Primanti Brothers sandwiches are fucking awesome and I will never make fun of them.)

Now, if you are a Steelers fan who happens to live down here and you are not actually from Pittsburgh, please say the following before cheering like a madman: “I root for this team because I picked them when I was a kid because they were good and it made me feel good to root for a winning team.” After that, MAYBE I will refrain from shooting you.

If you are from Pittsburgh and you live here (I’m looking at you Dirty Dave): please do us all a favor and do not remind us how totally awesome it is that you moved from the ‘Burgh and now get to see your favorite team play in (and most likely win) the Super Bowl in the totally much warmer and more fun town that you chose to move to because the weather was better. We know. We get it. You’re happy. We would be happy, too. Now, just sit down and be happy and we’ll all watch the game.

In short, stay classy Steelers’ fans.

Cardinals Fans:
I have no stereotypes of you because you really haven’t ever had a good team for which to root so I’ve never actually, um, met one of you. Also, your team has only been good for approximately a month so you probably don’t even know the basic rules of the game yet and as such I am extending you a little leeway. I wish you no ill will as you struggle to crawl out of your fandom infancy. However, I feel it is my duty to read you my famous Bandwagon Fan Speech (I gave this to Patriot fans a few years ago and none of them took the advice and now everyone hates them so please pay attention to the following):

No one wants to hear how much you suffered rooting for a crappy team all these years. Your freaking team could hardly sell out a game over the last fifty years and no one, seriously, freaking no one cares to hear about how hard it has been “rooting” for this crappy team. If you start complaining, I will force you to name twenty players on the Cardinals as well as the offensive and defensive coordinators. If you cannot do that and you expect me to consider you a longtime suffering fan, I will shoot you.

No one wants to hear about the lack of respect that your team received this season. If your team had earned anything prior to this season, it was a lack of respect. Complaining about a lack of respect will get you a respectful bullet in your respected ass.

In short, I don’t blame you, bandwagon fans. Fan bases have to start some time and they are usually not built until a team starts winning. This is Tampa Bay; no one knows this better than us.

But, and this is important, if Plaxico Burress had shot himself in a Tampa nightclub it wouldn’t even have been a misdemeanor. We like guns down here and we hate high strung assholes.

No need to thank me for this sage advice. This is just the kind of superhero I am.