The Badge, The Players, The Fans Deserve Better - Three Years Later

 

Last Wednesday our focus was rightly on the USOC semifinal, as disastrous as that was, so the anniversary of the C38 protest that night 3 years earlier kind of passed us by.  I had planned to circle back to that tonight to cover where things had gone in those 1103 days between that night and now, but Matt Pollard over at Burgundy Wave beat me to it today.

Go read his column, it covered just about every point I had planned to cover and he's a better writer than me so you'll get more out of it.  The only thing I'll add is that in my prior columns on this I've asked the question "The Badge, The Players, The Fans Deserve Better, have they go it?" and the answer is no.

The Rapids FO has done a good to great job of finding money to invest in the roster by selling off pieces for big money (Bombito, Mihailovic, Herrington, Navarro) but the problem is that has largely come at the expense of results on the field.  In those three years we've managed two semifinal appearances (Leagues Cup 2024, USOC 2026) and been blown out of both games.  In the league play we finished 7th in the West/13th overall and 11th/21st and our one playoff series ended in blowout losses too.  Off the field there's been a few additions to the stadium/fan experience but for the most part its the same run-down stadium that's way behind the times as it was 3 years ago.

Its very clear that the Front Office is still handcuffed by the same budget restrictions they were three years ago, and for all of KSE's talk then, and Kevin Demoff's talk this offseason, about investing in this club and making it a winner we're still a afterthought in the KSE stable.  And the badge, the players, the fans still deserve better.