Philly Fans, You're the Worst: GQ

Philly sport fans have long been perceived as nasty, vitriolic and full of venom for the opponent or anyone wearing the opponent’s colors, but GQ Magazine has taken dumping on our fans to a whole new level.

Eagles and Phillies fans placed No. 2 and No. 1 in the magazine’s countdown of the Top 15 “Worst Sports Fans in America.”

What no love for Flyers, Sixers, Union or Wings fans?

Despite the omission of other squads' fans, GQ tells fans in the City of Brotherly Love that we should start planning the parade because we are the worst in Adam Winer’s "heavily researched list" of "the bleacher creatures, bottle-throwers, couch-torchers, sexual harassers, projectile vomiters, and serially indifferent bandwagon-hoppers marring our national landscape."

Come on, Philly has never been known for couch torching.

Here is a snippet of the exact reasons why the GQ folks think we are the worst of bad behaving fandom:

Over the years, Philadelphia fans have booed Santa Claus, their own star players, and most absurdly, the recipient of America's very first hand transplant, whose crime was dribbling in a ceremonial first pitch -- thrown with his freshly transplanted hand. Boooo! Admittedly, there are some things fans have cheered. Like Michael Irvin's career-ending neck injury and a fan being tased on the outfield grass. Things reached their nadir last season, when Citizens Bank Park played host to arguably the most heinous incident in the history of sports: A drunken fan intentionally vomited on an 11-year-old girl.

That’s harsh lumping in not only all Phillies fans but also Eagles fans into a group based on the action of a single idiotic fan dubbed Pukemon.

I once saw a San Diego Chargers fan throw a shoe at a Raiders fan and proceed to punch a fellow Chargers fan (because the missed the Oakland fan) while falling down 10 aisles of seats. Does that mean all Bolts fans are drunken idiots?

I didn’t think so.

But GQ does lump us together ahead of fan bases like the Duke Blue Devils basketball, Boston Red Sox, Penn State football and the Montreal Canadiens for more than just Pukemon and the red-suited field jumper.

The truth is this: All told, Philadelphia stadiums house the most monstrous collection of humanity outside of the federal penal system. "Some of these people would boo the crack in the Liberty Bell," baseball legend Pete Rose once said. More likely, these savages would have thrown the battery that cracked it.

Ouch!

This all seems carried away. Yes we are passionate but to say that a fan base that sells out every home game as both the Eagles and Phillies do and also travels well enough to make road games in places like D.C. and New York look like home games is wrong.

Instead of picking on passion, GQ should be beating on bandwagon fan bases like the Tampa Rays, Los Angeles (insert team name here) or Sacramento Kings.

What do you think, are we really that bad?

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