Philadelphia Sports Fans: Hate Innovation – Or Do We Just Hate to Lose?

This past weekend, David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News tweeted a link to a column he wrote a year ago.

In that column, Murphy theorized that the reason Chip Kelly and Sam Hinkie were receiving so much criticism was because they were “outside-the-box” innovators. He speculated that their unusual methods were tough for Philly fans to accept, and that the city’s fans felt more comfortable with more traditional methods of operation, even though those methods hadn’t been successful.

This tweet came on the heels of another column in which he criticized Philadelphia sports fans who had the nerve to actually be happy about Hinkie’s firing. He implied that Sixers fans would prefer to have more traditional thinkers at the helm, and as a result, continue to languish in irrelevance.

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First off, I’m not sure why Murphy thinks the fans have that much power towards the operation of the city’s teams. Does he think that Sixers owner Joshua Harris is reading negative tweets and message board comments, and basing his decisions on popular opinion?

Of course Philadelphia sports fans can make their voice heard by impacting the team financially, and Sixers fans have done a decent job in that area by not watching games. Are the low attendance and ratings because fans don’t like Hinkie’s unusual methods…or because the team has been the worst in the NBA over the past three seasons? Should fans have shown how enamored they were of Hinkie’s Process by spending money to watch a team that has little chance of victory, and rarely even kept games close?

Murphy spends a lot of time comparing Hinkie to the front office executives who preceded him, and that’s downright confusing. Is there a single Sixers fan who lovingly reminisces about the Ed Stefanski era? The problem with  Hinkie’s predecessors wasn’t complacency or traditional thinking, the problem was that they botched their big moves spectacularly.

If you recall, it was Stefanski and company who made a big move specifically because they weren’t happy being a fringe playoff team. Unfortunately, their plan for moving out of that position was to trade for Andrew Bynum. That epic mistake, combined with a huge miss when they had the #2 overall draft pick, is why those guys failed.

Then there’s Chip Kelly. Obviously, it was fan opinion that caused him to be fired. It had absolutely nothing to do with him ticking off the team owner while the on-field performance deteriorated.

Eagles fans generally liked Chip Kelly and his innovations. Most people were behind his sports science ideas and his up-tempo offense, and when he won the NFC East in his first season, the city was comfortably in his corner. Fan support didn’t start to slip until his second season when the team missed the playoffs and some of his players openly complained about his methods.

When he started making questionable moves that didn’t work out, fans turned against him. It wasn’t because he was “innovative” or “different,” it was because his decisions backfired horribly. Yes, Hinkie and Chip Kelly were innovators.

They attempted to bring new methodology and new techniques. And yes, some Philly fans weren’t completely behind those techniques. But had those methods resulted in a title – heck, if they had even resulted in sustained success, I think the city’s fans would have been behind them 100%.

Please don’t shed any tears for Murphy though. Hinkie and Kelly may be gone, but he’s already turned his affections towards new Phillies general manager Matt Klentak.  Klentak is doing all sorts of innovative things like hiring former Google executives and introducing new analytics systems.

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Of course, if Klentak fails at his job, I’m sure it will be because the fans refused to accept those newfangled methods. Instead, they’ll likely be busy pining for the days of more traditional leaders like Ruben Amaro.