DC United front office, or lack thereof

This is the leadership James is brining to them. Nice job SE board in picking a replacement for Paul.

 

I know plenty of rank-and-file Screaming Eagles members who demanded their membership dues back. They lost about 50% of their membership over this garbage. There is no public forum for rank and file SE's to voice their disapproval of the board's actions. They can only vote with their wallets. The SE's facebook page is heavily moderated, the SE's don't have a tradition of using it for conversations anyway, and only the board has access to the website. Unless you happen to be friends with a (former) rank-and-file SE member, there isn't really a way to learn what they think about the lousy things the board is doing in their name.

There are no elections for Screaming Eagles officers. Board members are nominated by board members. It's leadership by clique. The Screaming Eagles are a dead group walking. They will be a ticket broker only. Nobody wants to pay money to be part of a group whose sole reason to exist is to be a toady for a front office. Without the in-stadium atmosphere that the Barra Brava provides, the Screaming Eagles will lose their identity. Other DC United fans won't even recognize them as a supporters' group anymore.

The current FO doesn't seem to care. At least not yet. If this gets better, it won't be until 2019. Maybe they'll connect the dots that the atmosphere that the Barra Brava provides helps sell tickets. Maybe not. Your guess is as good as mine.

disclosure: While many of you probably already know this from talking to me in person or from my long posting history on this board, I am a simple rank-and-file member of the Barra Brava. I pay my dues, I tailgate, I stand, I sing, I waive flags, I wear a fedora. I don't make any decisions and I'm not interested in doing so. There aren't elections for Barra Brava leadership either but the leadership structure is more informal; if you start helping out regularly, you'll gradually be accepted as a leader or "elder." Oscar is the President and founder and everybody agrees on that fact. I am friends with some of the "elders" and acquaintances with others but have no interest in that role. I don't know much about the District Ultras leadership structure other than that they have a very troll-a-rific online presence.

 

I don't see any reason for their regular Joe's to care tbh. Would surprise me if most even gave a "That sucks for them" line.

Winners don't usually feel bad for the casualties of war. They got the access to tickets an exclusive rights to communicate with the FO.

 

It would surprise me if they even knew about all this garbage. Maybe a couple will say, "where are the other SG's?" then forget about it.

 

I've mentioned my story on this board before - I'd been a paying SE member since about 2014 I think, but only because I had tickets there, not because I had any affinity for the group. After the events of this offseason, I didn't renew my membership. I have season tickets through the team, I don't need game day access, so I don't feel like a "winner". As a "regular joe" with tickets in the supporters end but unaffiliated with any groups, I just don't care to pick a side, or feel that it's necessary for me to do so. I just don't care. I'm in it for the soccer, not to be an activist for a group I'm not apart of.

 

At the end of the day, I'm imagining Probably 98% of fans feel this way and assume a good amount aren't even aware of an issue.

 

Well said, me too. The FO will get to where it should, after it has exhausted all other options.

 

I became a fan of DC because of the SGs. It's hard to imagine that they'll cease to meaningfully exist but that's what I'm expecting right now. Hope I'm wrong. Maybe @Bootsy Collins (?) was right when he wondered whether it would have been better to lose the team than have it killed.

 

The way in which the Ultras and Barra fill the stadium with sound and atmosphere alone should make every average fan care. The fans who show up on a rainy Wednesday night for a game would be a morgue without those the Ultras and Barra, because the last 4 games at the Plex and Annapolis should tell you that the SE will not carry the building.

 

Unaffiliated with any group (although my son and I once sang and chanted with the Ultras many moons ago at the "Plex in a USOC game). I was at the Houston match -- the SE's were a disgrace to the concept of being a supporter group. No chants, no energy and most of them left when the weather turned shitty. Maybe they were afraid the rain would ruin their $300 shoes. This whole development is said, but absolutely understandable if you understand how the FO is structured, who is in charge and how they make a metric shit ton of money regardless of the success or failure of the team on the field.

 

I like soccer more than I like gridiron football or baseball or whatever, so I guess soccer certainly does *matter* to why I'm "in it". But it's not the biggest reason. I mean, there's lots of other opportunities to watch live soccer around here. All the universities have teams, the high schools have teams; lots of rec leagues play not far from my house. Yes, yes, it's not as high a level; but so what? That's no more excuse for not watching it anymore than it's a reason for a fan in England to abandon lower level teams like Tranmere Rovers or Luton Town or Rushden and Diamonds or whoever.

I've been a fan, and a supporter, and a member of supporters groups. The attachment to the team that these things have provided is a HUGE reason why I go to the matches.

Would you have the same interest in going to DCU matches if you were an absolute neutral? If you didn't care one way or the other what happened to DCU in the match? Being a supporter of DCU is a huge reason why I have gone to the games, because it makes everything that happens feel bigger. I mean, sports fandom is a fundamentally irrational thing: nobody sits at home rooting for Charmin to get more market share from Quilted Northern or hoping that Green Giant outdoes Del Monte. We attach ourselves to a sports team because doing so amplifies the enjoyment *and* the pain. Life feels more lived when things matter more.

If you simply go for the soccer, well, as long as the team's here, that'll be here, so you're OK. For me, I never went to games because "yay, soccer!" I went because I liked the *way* DC played and I liked its ambition; and I went because the organization seemed to genuinely care about its fans, like we were all a part of something; and I went because of the fellowship and love that I got and gave to friends before and at and after the matches. And of those three things, the second two of them have been intimately wrapped up in my association with the supporters culture in DC. Many of my best experiences of the last 15 years, friendships that I treasure, pleasure and pain that means a lot to me have all come to me because of my association with DCU supporters. I was far more "in it" for that than I was for the soccer.

Unfortunately, Hunt and Schoenbrun, and apparently Levien as well, all don't care about any of the things I listed. They don't care about how DCU plays or whether it has ambition; they don't care about fans except in a transactional sense; and they certainly don't care about the supporters or the reasons why they *are* supporters. In fact, they've actively tried to wreck some of these things, and others are unavoidably damaged by the move from Lot 8. They’ve systematically dismantled or destroyed everything I’ve loved about this team. Now they’re the MLS team in DC, and that’s it. If the only reason I went was for the soccer, that's be enough. But it's not.

Worse, they haven't even tried to hide the way they see fans. There are friends of mine who used to be *very* active participants in this forum, even during the lean years of 2010 and 2013 (I have specific people in mind that most people here would probably know) who we don't see in this forum any more because they stopped caring about DC United when it became impossible to fool themselves into believing that DC United cared about them. That suspension of disbelief -- the irrational imagining that a business actually cares about you, the feeling of belonging and being a part of it all -- is at the heart of being a fan of a sports team. How do you fool yourself into thinking you matter when you have a one-on-one meeting with a team VP and the team VP tells you -- not obliquely, but directly, without mincing words -- that you don't matter to them, and that you and long-time fans like you simply aren't in the team's plans for the future?

And then comes the events of this past February and since, in which the team has basically come straight out and told me "I have contempt for you". Since 2004, the only years I haven’t had a season ticket are years I had a stadium credential. In that time, the only home games I’ve missed, I missed because I was out of town, or too sick to stand. I have traveled around the country and internationally to support this team. I have attended coach Q&As and city council meetings. I have lunched with Jason Levien and lobbied my Ward council member for him. I have spent absolutely insane amounts of time and money on supporting this team, despite the fact that over the last few years, I keep hearing that the team management doesn’t want me around, and despite the friends of mine that have given up and stopped paying attention to DCU because the team doesn’t want them around.

Now this. I have tickets for the supporters section. How do I support a team that holds me in such contempt? How do I get emotionally involved when the organization wants me gone? And if I'm no longer emotionally involved, why go, when there are other things in the world that still grab me emotionally?

This doesn’t feel anything at all like DC United to me. It feels like a completely different organization that just happens to have the same name. If I was only in it for the soccer, perhaps that wouldn't matter. But I'm not, and never have been; so it does.

 

Charmin sucks, Quilted Northern rules.

 

I ********ing hate those fedoras.

 

Couldn’t have said it better.

 

Diss Mr. Whipple at your peril.

 

The first couple of hours inside open Audi Field will tell us all we need to know.

 

They both bow at the feet of Cottonelle (specifically the aloe or ultra versions). Yes, as an old man I am entitled to very strong opinions on TP

As a member of an old-time union household and a fan of NASCAR and soccer, I often actively root for the success or pain/failure of a brand in relation to other brands so that part of Bootsy's rant* makes no sense to me, but many other parts resonate well.


* Rant sounds dismissive but I don't mean it to be, just can't think of a better word. Missive or diatribe or manifesto don't seem better.

 

I gave the thumbs up for Cottonelle.

 

The only thing that chafes my ass more than a corncob are these SG name calling and pigtail tugging matches. Just meet at lot 8, have a good old fashioned dust up, pick up the closest teeth to where you're standing/laying and go watch the match. Then decide if the product on the field is worth all the drama. I not then as Mr. Bootsy suggests watch live matches elsewhere, I contend that they'll be pretty close to the "high" level displayed by this team recently

 

It's still too far for me to go to wish ill on the team on the pitch; but I will say this. The last two USOC matches, and the most recent league match against Toronto, I was reminded that they existed well after the match was over when @fatbastard talked about them. ("Oh, there was a match last night?") I remembered the away match in Seattle halfway through the match. Even just last season, if you had described a Bootsy Collins this disconnected from what's happening with the team, I would have told you you were fscked in the head. It would have been unimaginable to me given how taken by this team I have been. And now here I am.

 

Missive's not bad. Screed? Polemic? Core dump? Overlong babble? Cut-and-paste from Scott Pakin's Automatic Complaint Generator?

 

You are basically done being a fan of the team and it happens as quickly as this without your permission. I remember that for years I thought I would never be more of a DC United fan than a 'skins fan. Then one summer I found I didn't care about skins training camp. I've not been a fan since.

Anyone from the area knows the elevated importance of skins training camp in the DMV.