Purple Rain
Active Member
I am a product of PNGISD. I was privileged to wear the Purple & White football uniform and was lucky enough to receive a football scholarship and get a college degree. I’ll always be indebted to PNGISD, I love PNG – the Honor, Pride and Tradition and everything that PNG stands for. There is something special in this District that very, very few others can come close to matching. We are known statewide for the massive fan support for our football team.
I’ve said all of this for one reason: I think last week, some of our fans didn’t have all the information about the choice of stadiums for our game with Brenham and crossed the line by sending some pretty “abrasive” emails and phone calls to the Brenham Superintendent and Head Coach. I understand the main theme was that they were trying to “limit” our fan support by basically forcing us to play in a 10,000 seat stadium and this tactic would backfire on them.
I read the article in the Brenham Banner newspaper that was posted on this site. It seems the Brenham coach used these emails to his advantage by posting them in their locker room for all the players to read. In my day, we used to call this “Bulletin Board Material”. One team’s players would “run-down, disrespect, or insult” the others team’s players in the newspapers the week before the game was played. I remember we were playing state ranked TJ one week and PNG was a huge underdog. Flyers were printed and distributed and a newspaper article carried their slogan of the week: Come Friday night and see TJ’s “have no mercy” defense vs. PNG’s “Lawd have mercy” defense. I can’t tell you how demeaning it was to us and how dis-respected we felt. Our coaches put these flyers and newspaper articles in the fieldhouse and we had to look at them every day before and after practice. By Friday night’s game, we had extra incentive to give 150% to prove them wrong. We won the game 26-24. From this morning’s article in the Brenham paper about last night’s game, it’s evident that they felt under-estimated and disrespected by the emails from “arrogant” PNG fans.
Is this the reason we lost the game? I don’t know. What I do know is that sometimes when two athletic, evenly matched teams are playing, any slight advantage by whatever means could be the difference. I know we have the best fans in the state, but let’s be careful in the future not to let a few zealous fans, with good intentions, possibly give our opponents any slight advantage that can hurt our Indians.
I’ve said all of this for one reason: I think last week, some of our fans didn’t have all the information about the choice of stadiums for our game with Brenham and crossed the line by sending some pretty “abrasive” emails and phone calls to the Brenham Superintendent and Head Coach. I understand the main theme was that they were trying to “limit” our fan support by basically forcing us to play in a 10,000 seat stadium and this tactic would backfire on them.
I read the article in the Brenham Banner newspaper that was posted on this site. It seems the Brenham coach used these emails to his advantage by posting them in their locker room for all the players to read. In my day, we used to call this “Bulletin Board Material”. One team’s players would “run-down, disrespect, or insult” the others team’s players in the newspapers the week before the game was played. I remember we were playing state ranked TJ one week and PNG was a huge underdog. Flyers were printed and distributed and a newspaper article carried their slogan of the week: Come Friday night and see TJ’s “have no mercy” defense vs. PNG’s “Lawd have mercy” defense. I can’t tell you how demeaning it was to us and how dis-respected we felt. Our coaches put these flyers and newspaper articles in the fieldhouse and we had to look at them every day before and after practice. By Friday night’s game, we had extra incentive to give 150% to prove them wrong. We won the game 26-24. From this morning’s article in the Brenham paper about last night’s game, it’s evident that they felt under-estimated and disrespected by the emails from “arrogant” PNG fans.
Is this the reason we lost the game? I don’t know. What I do know is that sometimes when two athletic, evenly matched teams are playing, any slight advantage by whatever means could be the difference. I know we have the best fans in the state, but let’s be careful in the future not to let a few zealous fans, with good intentions, possibly give our opponents any slight advantage that can hurt our Indians.
