FanSided 250 shows anti-New York sports sentiments toward athletes
By Ed Stein
The 2019 edition of the FanSided 250 is out. There is a noticeable lack of New York sports stars. Find out who made it and who didn’t.
Our parent organization released its 2019 FanSided 250 this week. The annual project ranks “fandoms” from many different sources such as sports, music, celebrities, movies, tv, etc, based on a person or team’s “buzz”. When looking at the list as a whole, it’s obvious to me that New York sports teams and athletes were ranked far lower than they should have been, or not ranked at all.
It’s not easy when someone has to tell their higher-ups that they are wrong. I’m going to bite the bullet and do just that. With all due respect of course. I get it, people, outside of New York, don’t like New Yorkers. Those feelings carry over to New York sports, as shown in the 250.
For the record, aside from the New York Yankees and Islanders, teams from the area finished their respective seasons anywhere between just over mediocre and far out of the money in 2019. That might be a decent justification, but it fails to take into consideration the amount of “pull” area teams and athletes have across the world.
Not one of us this year
I would love to have a recording of Chris Jericho saying “OBJ, you just made the list,” and see the reaction on the wide receiver’s face. It isn’t going to happen and I’m not sure Odell Beckham Jr. (81st overall, 17th athletes) was a New York area player in 2019.
Denying he has “buzz” is foolish, OBJ is a human conversation stater. His trade to Cleveland right before the draft was a shock as well as the skirt/kilt he wore to the Met Gala in May.
OBJ appreciated the fans, his heartfelt goodbye on Instagram to Big Blue Nation was refreshing and great to see. His bashing of the team in GQ Magazine last July was not (whether or not I agreed with parts of the interview). Then again he created a buzz.