Ed Rendell: Is Pennsylvania Governor a Die-Hard Fan Or Just Plain Irresponsible?

Ed Rendell has made it no secret that he’s a huge fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, and this weekend he took it too far.

The NFL decided to postpone Sunday’s game between the Eagles and Minnesota Vikings because of a forecasted snowstorm that brought blizzard conditions to the area around the scheduled start time.

Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, made it clear that he didn’t agree with the league’s decision.

"This is part of what’s happened in this country," Rendell said in a radio interview with 97.5 The Fanatic. "I think we’ve become wussies. I agree with Will Bunch and I think that in most places in the world, people would have sneered at us. This is football. I played football. I played in the snow. The fans can make judgments themselves. They can decide if they’ll go to the game—or they’ll drive home a little more slowly, or take Broad Street, which was fine last night. That’s up to the fans."

There’s a line between being a fan that wants to see his team play and looking out for the welfare of the citizens he has to protect as the governor of the state and he clearly crosses it.

The NFL can’t have a game where teams, stadium personnel and fans have to travel in conditions that make it unsafe to be out on the road. It’s bad public relations and it’s bad business.

While the snow wasn’t as much as forecasted, the winds made any travel borderline impossible. The NFL had to give proper notice to ticketholders and did so to avoid any accidents. However, calling people “wussies” wasn’t enough for Rendell as he took it a step further.

“If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? He’s right,” Rendell said during the radio interview. “The people would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked, and they would be doing calculus on the way down.”

Now what he said there isn’t just stupid, it’s racist and based off of stereotypes. Also, the cancellation of a football game has nothing to do with the standing the United States has in the world. Rendell came off as a blowhard who is out of touch and more concerned with a game than people’s safety.

I live in the Philadelphia suburbs, and anyone in the area will tell you the winds were nasty that night. They were even brutal the next day. The snow was light and fluffy and was flying all around, making things tough on travelers.  The visibility was awful and if you had fans coming into the city on I-95, it would have been a nightmare.

Had the NFL allowed the game to be played, and fans were injured trying to get there or on the way home, people would have blasted the league for being so negligent. The NFL did the right thing by moving the game to tonight and while it was disappointing not to see a game in the snow, it was what was in the best interest of everyone involved.

In the end, Rendell looks like someone who was just trying to cause a stir and be controversial because he let his fandom get in the way of his responsibilities as a governor. He’s lucky he’s not going to be up for re-election because calling the people in the state “wussies” isn’t the easiest way to their hearts.

Next time Rendell wants to say something like this, he should just keep quiet and let the league do what’s best for everyone involved.