DAMN, the Jacksonville Jaguars suck AGAIN this year!

I love NFL football and am disappointed that I enjoy watching the Steelers and Atlanta play more than my home team. Why is that you might be asking, well our team has been mediocre for so long that 17,000 season ticket holders gave up their tickets this year, that’s right seventeen thousand season ticket holders did not renew. WOW, that number pretty much says it all! We really suck and with Jack Del Rio running the rudder, we are obviously in for another terrible season. I am somewhat stunned that the team owner, Wayne Weaver, has allowed this substandard performance to go on so long. Jack has been here since the 2003 season and in that time our record has been 50 – 46, barely 50% of our games. Moreover, Bill Prescott (Jaguars CFO) can blame the 17k folks for leaving on the economy and the unemployment all he wants but that is Bull, plain and simple. If we use Charlotte as an analog, we can prove out that he is full of it. In Charlotte, the unemployment rate is 12.4% while ours is 10.5% and somehow their tickets are sold out this year, not just season tickets but ALL tickets. Their record is not greatly different from ours over the same period at 56-40 but they made it to the playoffs last year. That alone is proof enough to me but when you consider that their stadium is even bigger than ours is it pretty much slams the exclamation point on that stupid claim.


I do not even need to wonder about this one, Wayne Weaver did not create successful companies like Shoe Carnival and Nine West by hiring and retaining top management that could only perform at anywhere close to a 50% of potential – NO WAY. So why does he keep him on? Are there pictures of Wayne in heels, is there some other little known factoid that is being used as leverage so Jack can keep his job? Wayne is not a stupid man, he negotiated (what was then) the most lucrative deal with a host city amongst NFL franchises, including rights to virtually all parking and concession sales in the city-owned and operated stadium. That is not the sign of someone who doesn’t get it. So there has to be something, there just has to be. I was so pissed off last week when I watched the Colts game, Tivo’d by the way because they are to agonizing to watch live, Jack is all smiles and laughing with the boys on the sideline. He was not appearing to take it as personally or as seriously as he needs to, Jacksonville loves football and has little tolerance for a loser, which the Jags and he are right. When I hear statements like “it's another rebuilding year” I know deep down that is "Jacktalk" for we are going to suck again this year and you fans should expect another losing damn season.


It would not be hard to exceed my expectations for the team, they are so low right now that almost ANYTHING would be more than I expected. The thing that really makes me mad is the fact that if we do not get rid of this guy, and soon, Wayne may be forced to sell the team or move it someplace else. With stats like 17K people not renewing their season tickets the writing is on the wall, maybe I need to get some red spray paint and go outline that so they can see it. No business can sustain that kind of loss in the revenue stream, or fans. Since Wayne has such a great deal he is actually losing money on the parking, or lack of parking. He is losing money on concessions, or lack of concessions and god knows where else he is hemorrhaging money. We, the citizens of Jacksonville, the Fans, have paid the price as well, the stadium underwent a 121 million dollar renovation when we got the team and we are paying for the lucrative deal Wayne Weaver was able to negotiate. We used to have a sponsor for the stadium they left as well. Alltel signed a 6.2 million dollar 10 year naming deal that expired in 2005, and I assume that since our team was a loser they no longer wanted to be affiliated with us so they did not renew the deal. Since then our stadium is called Jacksonville Municipal stadium, an embarrassment if you ask me.


When our stadium was built it was big, 76877 seats, but before the start of the 2005 season team officials installed a series of tarps covering some 9713 seats. This was to reduce the seating capacity so the games would stop being blacked out, so we have documentable proof that this losing streak has been going on long before the recent economic turmoil. With seven sections completed eliminated we still can not seem to fill the rest. Of course, we can’t fill them, no one wants to come watch a losing team embarrass themselves? We are now anticipating that ALL the local games this season will be blacked out, a damn shame, a damn shame since in September of 2007 an attendance record was set in this stadium at 85,412 – yes they had to build additional bleachers for a college football game between Florida state and Alabama. That is proof positive that we will come out to watch good games, we don’t even have to win all of them but at least have a good showing. The local paper and sports announcers are becoming more vocal about our collective disappointment in the head coach. With no confidence in the coach and with the high level of turnaround in the assistant coaching staff’s it is going to become increasingly difficult to field a good team. We also have had a HUGE turn over in players with nearly half of them being new to the team this year. Now the key word there is team and while you can force together a group of individually talented folks that does not a team make, leadership does and repetitive practice together as a team. With the turnover being so high we are never making the team thing. As any manager knows, without continuity of staff if is almost impossible to produce, whether it be widgets or a winning team.


I am even more scared for next year, the downward spiral is in full swing and I am not sure how long the Weaver’s can sustain a loser. Our inability to even win games let alone make it to the playoffs will cause even more defections from the ranks of season ticket holders. The one good thing right now is that there are a lot of good coaches out there, the bad news is that if we wait too long our stigma as a loser will be so great none of the good ones will want to come here. Wouldn’t it be great to get Tony Dungee back in Florida – that thought almost brings a tear to my eye. I do not think that the Gator hero in Tim Tebow is the answer to our problems either. Even if he was able to transition quickly into the pro’s and even if we wanted to bench our 60 million dollar quarterback that solution would only be a band aid on a still festering wound, Without proper coaching no player is good enough to carry a pro team, that is just a fact…….. DAMNIT I want the Jags to be a good team and I do not want to enjoy watching other teams as much as I do!