Stop Giving Kids Footballs, Cam!!!

Hey Cam and the rest of the Carolina Panthers. Can you please stop giving kids footballs when you score touchdowns?

Look, I get what you are trying to do. You are trying to make a memorable moment for a kid out in the crowd. I’ve seen the looks these kids give when they get a football. It ranges from amazement to overwhelming joy. I’m sure you have all the right intentions with what you are trying to do but you need to stop and you need to stop immediately.

Now this next question I ask of you guys with all sincerity: Have you ever been to a baseball game before? I mean seriously, do you know what the worst part of going to a baseball game is now? It’s kids who think they have to get a baseball when they go to a game. I saw a little boy get super pissed and then start crying when his sister got a ball that was thrown into the stands from the third-base coach. You know why this happens, because kids are stupid. They think if it happens to one kid it has to happen to them otherwise the world hates them.

Not only that but these baseballs aren’t just relegated to the ones that are being used in a contest. I once sat near the opposing teams bullpen at Miller Park. In fact, my seats were right above the bullpen and if I leaned over I could watch the pitchers warm up. A kid who didn’t even sit in my section stood at the end of the row with his glove and asked for a baseball any time a player touched a baseball. When that didn’t work he just held his glove out and looked like a sad-sack who had never experienced joy in his life and the only way that he could obtain it was through owning a $3 piece of leather and lace.

I felt bad for the parents because they spend $45-$50 for their kid to get into the game and he is more concerned about getting a baseball than the actual game.

Now these are different situations Cam, I understand. You scored a touchdown and hand the ball to the kid. The ball actually mattered in the scheme of the game. But guess what? That’s how it worked in baseball too. The only time you got a ball was when it was hit into the crowd. Now, the ball just has to share the same air as a ball player and it needs to be going home with a young fan.

You are approaching a slippery slope because soon kids are going to be yelling at you and begging you for a football when you are warming up. You are going to run out of bounds and your momentum is going to take you near the crowd, now every kid is rushing down the aisle wanting the football. Oh, and they aren’t going to care about anything around them either, like most kids. They will rush down to the rail, and beg for the football not realizing that they have knocked into 5 people and spilt their beers.

These kids are already at a game, that’s all they are entitled to. Don’t throw in some extra incentive for them. It’s going to make them more and more greedy. And then guess what’s also going to happen? They are going to turn into idiot adults too. Remember last season when a grown adult woman ripped a ball away from a Saints fan? Yeah, she wasn’t even a Saints fan but she took it anyway because it was a football. Or how about when at a charity softball game Donald Driver threw one of his cleats into the crowd and a lady took it right out of the hands of a kid. Even by the standards of what is considered a catch in the NFL this kid had possession and this lady swiped it right from him.

So quit it Cam. Quit it Carolina Panthers. Stop giving kids footballs. You might be building good-will with them right now, but they will grow up, they will turn insufferable and then when you go 5-11 then years from now they will be the first ones to say you need to get the fuck out of town because you are shitty at football.