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Last week, the Chicago Fire's owners -- Anschutz Entertainment Group -- fired Peter Wilt as president following 7 years with the club and replaced him with New York MetroStars VP John Guppy. The Club's GM since day one, Wilt has helped build a franchise that won 4 championships and also oversaw the deal providing the Fire a permanent home stadium in Bridgeview. Although he will remain general manager until the end of the season, his contract will not be renewed at the end of the season. Chicagoist admits we're not much of a soccer fan, but his credentials certainly sound pretty damn good. In fact, maybe a few other teams in town could benefit from hiring him. So we're not sure why he got canned.
Seems even the hard-core Fire fan don't understand either. So it's only understandable that the fan base of the Chicago Fire is very upset over this move. To protest Wilt's firing Section 8 Chicago, an independent Chicago Fire supporters' association, organized a variety of visible statements at this past weekend's season opener at Soldier Field.
Among the symbolic actions of displeasure were: waiting until 8 minutes after the game started to take their seats in Section 8, the wearing of black, and even the draping of the section in black fabric.
Section 8's website offers a number of photos documenting Saturday's protests.
According to frequent Chicagoist commenter Chris Costello's open letter to John Guppy, it seems that Anschutz made this move to bring in a salesman to replace a soccer guy. It doesn't matter what sport you're dealing with, that kind of move rarely succeeds. Same with business for that matter. But as Costello mentioned some think good salemen can sell anything. Guess Anschutz feels the need to sell the citizens of Chicago on the Fire leading up to their new stadium. However, putting a winning team on the field and letting their biggest fans organically sell their friends, family and others on the team is the way to build a true fan base. Hopefully this move won't backfire on the team.
Thanks, Chris
Image via Section 8 Chicago
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I gotta say, that Section 8 fan site makes the fan group seem them seem like one of the coolest sets of fans in Chicago. Cub fans just get drunk and pee in the streets, while Sox fans sneer at North Siders. I think I'd go to the Fire games just to hang with these die hards.
I was actually at that game, sitting right next to the Section 8 people. It was the first time I had been to a Fire game and i dont really pay much attention to the team--mostly because they don't play the games on broadcast TV, as I love soccer [luckily we get pretty good coverage of the Mexican league here on Ch.44 --Go Cruz Azul!].
The Section 8 "protest" was lost on me. I barely noticed when they walked in at 8:01 in the game. I appreciate their enthusiasm in a sparsely populated Soldier Field, but after watching them carry on for 90 minutes, I don't know whether to admire their gumption, or to consider them rather pathetic--spending all this energy worrying about the management of a mediocre football club.
Nevertheless, I would recommend to anyone that they check out a Fire game--especially as they play their last season in Soldier Field. I also am looking forward to attending games when they move to Bridgeview next season.
I'm not a Section 8 fan. I just like watching the game live.
But they do have a lot of fun. I meet with them sometimes after the game at Ginger's.
I think the point of the protest is that Pete Wilt is a good guy and there is no reason to fire him. He could have stayed on as GM and made this "Guppy" guy VP Marketing.
Note: If you are attending Soldier Field for Fire games, Beers (and I use the term loosely, since they only have MGD and Bud) are $6.50! Supreme outrage.
Moon-
I was going to comment on the outrageous beer prices as well!
The only saving grace is the beer vendor who was set up on the east side, first level (approximately behind Section 113/114). He is a dead ringer for the Milton character from the film Office Space. A very big dude, Milton has the admirable skill of gripping two MGD Tallboys with one hand and pouring them into two cups simultaneously.
I am sure I have seen other Beer guys do this before at various stadia, but the Milton resemblance made it pretty cool. When I was standing in line there was a Telemundo crew filming his exploits. I forgot to watch that night to see if it made it on the news!