News of Andrew Luck’s impending retirement must have surely been an absolute gut punch to learn about for any Colts fan, but, for some watching Bears-Colts in Indianapolis on Sunday, it also elicited serious feelings of anger. These emotions manifested themselves into the form of a shower of boos towards the second-best quarterback in franchise history as he walked off the only home field he’s known as a professional for the last time.
(The boo birds come out around 10 seconds in. Opening for them is one man yelling “LUCK. DON’T DO IT” loudly enough to get picked up by the television mics.)
On the off chance that you are one of those people who believe the fans were not actually booing Luck, but rather the circumstances of how the news of Luck’s retirement broke—as some have argued—here’s a reporter’s video from the stands that shows how people reacted when they noticed the newly retired quarterback making his way to the locker room:
After laying out his heart and soul on the podium, expressing that the pain he experiences on a daily basis has led him to make “the hardest decision of [his] life,” Luck addressed the jeers.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I heard the reaction,” Luck said. “Yeah, it hurt. I’ll be honest, it hurt.”
It’s a behavior that’s unfortunately so typical of particular brand of sports fans. No matter how much a player does for a team and a city, all of that goodwill can be gone in an instant if that player dares to put their health and safety above a desire to keep playing their sport. It never ceases to amaze me how some idiots can get so caught up in a fandom that they forget the players on the field are human beings.