Part of being a true fan of a team involves a stubborn refusal to understand that the other team has fans of its own who care about their team as much as you care about yours. Impossible! The other team is nothing more than Opponent. When you are watching on Sunday afternoon, all you want to know is: How do we kill these guys? Whom do we boo? Die, humans wearing different colors than the colors for which I have grown accustomed to cheering!
We are here to help. With a slight nod to Drew Magary’s Why Your Team Sucks series, we want to give you three people to scream at on the television every Sunday, peppering Cheetos flecks in every direction. The Giants play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at
Raymond James Stadium at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Here’s whom to boo on the Buccaneers.
Ronde Barber. Whether or not you harbor any ill will toward Ronde, feel free to express any lingering hate for his twin brother Tiki. Before he was making jambalaya with Emeril or whatever it is he does on the Today show, Tiki was busy criticizing coach Tom Coughlin and making us go along with him on his endless retirement tour. He probably never heard the “Tiki sucks” chants at the Giants’ Super Bowl parade, so let his brother have it Sunday instead.
Kellen Winslow. The fact that he’s a “fucking soldier” and — unless he’s changed his outlook on football since college — wants to “kill” the Giants this weekend should be enough to make you root against this guy. The fact that he somehow got his entire signing bonus after riding (and crashing) a motorcycle — reportedly in violation of his contract — just makes it that much easier.
Stylez G. White. If Mr. White’s parents were just horrible people and actually named their child Stylez, perhaps we’d cut him some slack. But they didn’t. Instead, the former Gregory Alfonso White Jr., who’s recorded two tackles so far this season, legally changed his name in 2008, taking the name from the best friend in the movie Teen Wolf. (Somewhere, Bill Simmons is applauding.) And what’s most upsetting, really, is that the character’s name in the movie is Stiles, and White changed the spelling on his own because … you know what, let’s not bother to look for the logic in any of this.