BroBible
Most sports fans stick with their team through thick and thin and do so knowing they’re going to be subjected to some rough stretches that will hopefully be canceled out by a return to glory. However, two podcasters who’ve spent the past six years covering the Carolina Panthers are waving the white flag because of how bad the team has gotten.
For the most part, sports fandom isn’t usually something you necessarily go out of your way to choose but rather a gift and a curse that ends up making its way into your life somehow or another. Some people are born into a family with preexisting allegiances, others pick theirs based on where they grew up, and a sizeable chunk (if not most) college sports fans root for the school they attended.
Debates about what constitutes a “real” fan tend to be fairly pointless, but I’d argue there’s a very clear distinction between a casual supporter and a true one.
The emotional highs that come with watching a successful team are a major aspect of what makes sports so appealing in the first place, but I’d argue you’re not getting the true experience if you abandon them instead of enduring the brutal lows that can accompany periods of mediocrity or downright awfulness.
Fans of the Carolina Panthers are currently being forced to endure one of those downturns, and it’s reached a point where some people who decided to start a podcast dedicated to the team have opted to call it quits.
In 2019, two Panthers fans named Stephen Costner and Jerry Dempster launched MeowMix, a weekly podcast devoted to the NFL franchise that has called North Carolina home since 1995.
When the show launched, the team was three years removed from the season that ended with a loss to the Broncos in Super Bowl 50 and hoping to bounce back after missing the playoffs heading into what ended up being Ron Rivera’s final year as their head coach.
It’s been a rough stretch since then, as the Panthers have not posted a winning record since 2017, have been coached by six different people since Rivera’s tenure (three of whom were hired for on a permanent basis), and “improved” to 5-12 last season after going 2-15 in 2023—the worst record in franchise history.
*MeowMix—*which has garnered over 1,000 subscribers on YouTube and spawned over 400 episodes—has been going strong despite the adversity that is slated to continue to be a running theme now that the Panthers have gotten off to a 1-3 start this season.
However, that is no longer the case based on the update the hosts shared earlier this week while announcing they have decided to go on an “indefinite hiatus,” saying they can no longer justify abandoning their families on Sunday to cover what ends up being a disappointing...
