Sports fans can be demented, mean, angry, nasty, violent and just plain crass.
And George Lampman is cashing in on it.
Lampman is taking advantage of the season-ending knee injury suffered by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to make a buck.
Lampman, who has a silk-screen printing company in Pittsburgh, has unveiled t-shirts that laud Kansas City Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard, the man who knocked Brady out for the season, as some kind of hero.
For $19.99, you can buy a Bernard Pollard fan club shirt, complete with a No. 12 (Brady's number) circled and crossed out. The shirt says the fan club was established Sept. 7, 2008, which is the day Brady went down.
Sick.
To me, this is a sign of how demented some fans have become.
Lampman doesn't argue the point.
"I can totally see where you're coming from," said Lampman, who is a diehard Steelers fan.
Isn't it crass, I asked?
"I can't disagree," he said.
So why do it? There's sadly a market out there. I spoke to Lampman Wednesday night for five minutes.
"I've sold six while we were talking," he said.
So who's ordering? The New York Jets fans are buying them with on addendum.
"They want them sent overnight so they can have them for Sunday," Lampman said.
Disgusting.
Don't people who buy these shirts realize that this is a man's livelihood we're talking about? When I mentioned that to Lampman, he callously replied, "he's not losing any money this year and I'm sure it's no career-ending."
Pollard can't be happy about this. He was sick about putting Brady out.
It's one thing not to like a player if you're a fan. It's another to make light of a serious situation.
Lampman said he might make up to $20,000 on the shirts. He's had 500 orders or so already.
I almost didn't write this because it only feeds the monster. But the whole issue is so sickening that I thought it needed to be pointed out just how low some of our fans have gone.
