Booing Cancer?

OK, I've been throwing this around in my head for a couple of days, and I need to post about it.

Tuesday night, fans at the Philadelphia Flyers game booed a video that had messages from some players from rival teams.

Unfortunately, the video was a promotion for the league's efforts to fight cancer through their partnership with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

I can take several perspectives on this.

First, I look at this the way a sports fan looks at it. Philadelphia fans are...passionate. And I have to respect that. I've been to a Phillies game, so I've seen firsthand what they're like. And there's nothing like seeing a game when the whole crowd is into it. Of course, Philadelphia fans can also get out of hand. Like the time they booed Santa Claus and threw snowballs at him. Or when they beat up Chief Zee, the Redskins mascot (read about it in the right-hand column on this link). Or when they cheered Michael Irvin almost getting paralyzed....And that's just the Philadelphia Eagles fans.

So in some ways, booing their rivals isn't so bad. No one's bones were broken, after all.

But then I look at it as a lymphoma patient, particularly one who is getting increasingly frustrated lately with the lack of accurate information being provided to people about the disease. (And I can't speak for all cancer patients, but there are a whole lot of them who get tired of all the pink stuff in October, and wish their own cancers had so much publicity.) So I'm not happy about the opportunity for education and promotion being drowned out by a bunch of boos.

But when I step back and think about it, I have to put some blame on whoever made the video and decided to show it at NHL games. The video starts out with three hockey players introducing themselves. Before you even know what the video is for, you've already lost a whole bunch of fans, other than those of the Penguins, Sabers, and Blackhawks. It's just poor design. Make local videos with players from each team to show in their own arenas. Cut down on the booing, and get people to pay attention.

And in case you did want to donate, since Sidney Crosby asked you to, you can text HFC to 90999, and you'll donate $5 to help hockey fight cancer.

(Didn't know if you caught those details over all the booing.)