“Our Fans Serve As Extra Sets Of Lungs”: One-On-One With Fire GM Nelson Rodriguez

In late October I wrote an editorial about fan misbehavior and how the club responds to it. A fan had been ejected from Toyota Park for setting off a flare and, according to some accounts, handed a year-long ban. That incident stuck with me because I had previously been yelling about Fire fans doing The Chant, which had experienced a spike toward the end of the season. I felt that the club wasn’t doing enough to deal with homophobic chants while cracking down harshly on something that, to me and other members of the Fire fan community, is fairly innocuous.