It isn’t easy being a Minnesota sports fan. Sometimes, we just need to tear others down to pick ourselves back up.
Who better to taunt than the Green Bay Packers and their fans?
That’s what 31-year-old Ryan Rhody of St. Paul was thinking when he crafted a sign that read, “HAHAHAHA PACKER FANS” and displayed it proudly during Monday’s NHL game between the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets at Xcel Energy Center.
Packer fans, best known for wearing ridiculous cheese hats and bragging about their however many championships, got a taste of a Viking fan’s life on Sunday when Green Bay melted down in Gary Anderson/41-donut/Brett Favre-like fashion in an NFC Championship loss to the Seattle Seahawks. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called it a “super-sized collapse.”
For the record, it’s one thing to miss a field goal or throw an interception at an inopportune time, but to choke on a 16-0 lead, allow an onside kick and get torched on a 35-yard dagger in overtime is a whole new level of collapse.
Rhody, naturally, took advantage of his awesome seats behind the Wild bench to rub a little salt in Green Bay’s wound.
“I hate the Packers fans more than anything. So I will do anything to chirp them in any way possible,” Rhody told the Star Tribune. “With the amount of texts and Facebook messages I got when they were (leading on Sunday). this was my way to laugh right back at them.”
Rhody said he had thousands of tweets and text messages sent his way after the sign was shown on TV.
Deadspin called Rhody’s display the “gloriously childish essence of fandom.”
Rhody’s attention is just getting started. He ate lunch with FOX 9’s Dawn Mitchell on Tuesday.
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