Quote:The changing technology is what can make Jacksonville's grasp on this franchise tenuous in the minds of many.

 

Prior to cable television, the internet, and NFL Sunday ticket, pretty much the only way you could keep up with your team was through the newspaper or various team publications.  If you moved to another NFL  town (especially one with an NFL team not aligned with your team's rival's), it would be easier to simply follow the local team.  Had Jacksonville gotten an expansion team when Tampa did, a lot of the transplants that moved here might have evolved into Jaguars fans due to that same dynamic-assuming of course the Jaguars product was palatable enough to attract fans.

 

However, with the advent and proliferation of the various technologies listed above, it's much easier to follow a team outside of the local market than it ever was before.  Now, watching a winning team or learning about its players and history are a change of the channel or click of a mouse away.  That can work for you if you are a winning team, but against you if you are a team like the Jaguars in a small market as is. 

 

People like to be associated with winners.  The teams with the biggest nationwide fan bases are typically the most successful ones.  That's no coincidence. 

 

When the Jaguars lose, they lose fans.  I'm not just talking about the once loyal STHs disgruntled by the team's failures.  I'm talking about the youth who are forming their football identities.  I'm talking about those kids who are deciding with which teams their allegiance will reside. 

 

When Malik Jackson observes the large numbers of Raiders fans in attendance at the game, it exemplifies what I have explained above.  The Raiders are some 35 years older than the Jaguars.  Even despite their decade or so of down in the dumps play prior to this year, they still remain among the most storied and successful NFL franchises around.  Most of their success happened prior to the advent of most of those technologies I mentioned above, and were sustained for a long period of time.  They had generations of fans before we were even born, and they had kids who they raised to be Raiders fans.

 

Our fans have not had the luxury of supporting a super successful team.  We don't have old highlights of our games narrated by John Facenda.  We don't have the big gaudy rings and shiny Super Bowl trophies.  We don't multiple players in Canton.  We don't have any of those things.  Without the Super Bowl wins to draw fans early on, with the prolonged losing (and really BAD losing of late), there is nothing to retain the enthusiasm or loyalty of current fans, and little to nothing to earn the loyalty of the kids coming up now.  They don't want to be teased because of their team. It isn't just kids, either.  How many of us wear our Jaguars stuff in public only to hear some unsolicited smart [BAD WORD REMOVED] remark about how bad the team is?  Those attacks are a form of tax on our allegiance.  Instead of dealing with this crap, kids would rather be Patriots, Steelers, Packers and Raiders fans.

 

I don't know if Jackson and the other players realize how this dynamic works.

 

I get what you are saying and I do agree.  I remember when I used to be able to watch just a couple of NFL games live every weekend (before cable TV).  Growing up in a non-NFL city I had several different "favorite" teams and never really had any allegiance to any particular team.  For me it was more about players and the games.  When the Navy brought me here to Jacksonville in 1989 I was a "Miami Dolphins fan" mainly because I was a Dan Marino fan (along with a few others).  I guess you could say that I was/am simply a fan of the game.

 

When it was announced that Jacksonville was awarded the expansion team, I was on-board all the way and have been a die-hard Jaguars fan ever since.

 

My point though is that today's technology has changed the way fans look at the game.  Heck you have websites like Alfie's that are simply made up of stuff put out on Twitter.  Even watching the NFL programming on TV many times has the hosts looking at Twitter for the latest news or fan commentary.  The down side is that during an actual interview, a player might say something and some "fan" will take a small quote completely out of context and twit it.  The next thing you know it filters it's way on to message boards like this and so on.

 

With some of the "news" put out on social media, you would think that things are worse off for the team now than it really is.

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