Ray Rice Will Never Be a Favre-like Deity in Green Bay Now

One of the more tiring aspects of intense sports discussion is how, once fans run out of game-relevant trash talk, rivalries descend to a series of outdated regional stereotypes. Which is all well and good for a while, but then eventually it just starts to get tiresome. So when you see stories like this, where Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice says disparaging things about Green Bay, you know a lot of predictable ugliness is to follow.↵↵⇥“To be honest with you, it was just Lambeau Field,” he said. “I didn’t see anything special. They put us in the middle of nowhere and it’s not a real exciting place. ↵⇥↵⇥“Everything about this place is terrible, to be honest with you.”↵⇥

↵↵ ↵↵Surely Rice felt disappointed after having a subpar game in which he committed a costly turnover deep in Packers territory. Unless he was overtly trying to be a jerk, there’s no other reason to say that to a reporter for a publication in Milwaukee.↵

↵↵These sort of things engender troll-laden debates on the Internet about things that have nothing to do with sports. This Pro Football Talk post has more than 100 comments on it, no doubt evenly split between people saying all Midwesterns are fat and those remarking on Baltimore’s all-criminal population. But then, that’s the proper forum for such nonsense. Rice should show a little more class in defeat.↵

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