There’s this common social media phrase that goes, “The praise needs to be as loud as the criticism.” One odd irony in our hyper negative internet culture is that you never see the phrase’s inverse, “The criticism needs to be as loud as the praise.”
With that in mind, after getting much media praise at the start of last season, Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon isn’t getting much mainstream criticism (Sports Media A) over what looks like her team’s slapdash destruction. For that, you go to the wilds of Reddit, where fans make observations like:
Since Carlie Irsay-Gordon Took Over, the Colts Are 10-16, Traded Two First-Round Picks for Sauce Gardner, Sold Off Key Veterans, and Now Appear to Have Bungled the Jonathan Taylor Trade Situation.
In the official media spaces, there’s been this frontlash to describing a female owner who a) does the job in a visibly bizarre manner and b) gets suboptimal results. There’s this prevailing bias toward soft-peddling the reality as a bulwark against hypothetical sexist football chuds being unfair to a powerful woman. But what if this is just a classic eccentric owner screwing up a team? Actually that’s not a hypothetical. Right now, it’s simply describing a bad situation.