I am all for professional sports. Hell, I’m good for almost any sport. I’m pretty sure that if I put my mind to it I would enjoy curling. Coming from the Washington, DC, area you have to realize the wealth of sports in the area. There are numerous teams and institutions that a person could root for. And that’s what this post is about. Rooting. Cheering. Especially during the Super Bowl.

Here is what I don’t get: teams around the world have their own cheering sections that are affectionately named something intimidating. It givese color to the game and makes fans feel like they’re something. Let’s look at a few of these:

• The Dukies/Cameron Crazies from Duke a bunch of college kids dressed in their blue and white who whoop it up like nobody’s business at Duke University basketball games.
• The Oakland Raider’s BoSox Nation a bunch of nut cases who dress up looking like they came from a Mad Max movie or the former professional wrestling team ‘The Road Warriors’ (shush – my sisters and I watched with my dad when we were little)
• The Boston Redsox Raider Nation – Meh. Bunch of Boston freaks who needed to call themselves something to get over the World Series hump.
• The Cleveland Browns ‘Dog Pound’ – Cleveland sucks but these guys go all out with their dog metaphors.

Which brings me to this – why the hell is it that the Washington Redskins, who finally made it to the playoffs after 6 years, have ‘The Hogettes’?? A bunch of guys who wear ugly women’s dresses and wigs and wear fake pig noses. Seriously…what the fuck is that?! How is it that whenever national television decides to show the epitome of the Redskin’s fans they home in on one of these guys?

That’s not intimidating. That’s downright shameful. Essentially, these guys got together during the glory years of the Redskins era when the offensive line was known as the ‘Hogs’. They’ve been going to games in this garb since then (what was that? the 80’s??). Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I’m missing the tradition or the inside joke or some deeper meaning. You know what? I don’t care! It is downright STUPID. At somepoint these fat, aging fucks need to realize that the joke is over.

Granted, taking full advantage of the Redskin’s name would get a lot of ACLU/tree hugging/Native American watchdog groups up in arms. Why can’t Dan Snyder, with all his millions, do something more for the Native American population as a sort of reparation and to appease them (ok, I’m sure you can see that I really mean ‘bribe’). With all the people hawking tickets outside the game, why couldn’t we have the “Redskins Scalpers”?

Redskins Nation. Redskins Rowdies. Washington Whatzahoozits. Anything, ANYTHING, would be better than that crap. For the love of all that is holy, please resign your stupid dresses, wigs and pig noses. Maybe it was your fault the ‘Skins sucked so many years because you emasculated them.

Granted, they do a lot of community work and charity work. But is this really the image that the Washington Redskins want to portray? Ugh.