Upside Down Under: Why all the hatred for Carson Wentz?

Somebody help me out here. I’ve been a football fan for a lot of years and honestly don’t know what is going on right now. Why is there so much hatred for Carson Wentz?

My guess is it’s people who are hiding behind a computer screen and have never played football. I just don’t get it.

Here is a guy who grew up and played football at Bismarck Century, went on to be successful at North Dakota State University, then got into the National Football League.

He’s a professional football player and all of us in North Dakota should be proud of his accomplishments. Some people act as if he is the anti christ or something.

When I was growing up and playing baseball, I often wondered what it would be like to have seen Roger Maris hit his 61st home run in 1961. Maybe I did see it, but I was 2 years old and wouldn’t have remembered it anyway.

But in my mind, and the minds of my teammates, Roger Maris was the holy grail of sports and he was from North Dakota, playing his high school ball at Fargo Shanley.

Then came Dave Osborn and Phil Jackson, Mike Peluso and Paul Gaustad, Rick Helling, Travis Hafner and Darin Erstad. Most recently it’s been Weston Dressler and Jim Kleinsasser. And let’s not forget perhaps the most famous North Dakota athlete of all, Virgil Hill.

Does anyone hate them? When I drive around the state of North Dakota, I see Travis Hafner billboards outside of Sykeston where he grew up. Stop at a donut shop in Jamestown and people are still going to be talking about Darin Erstad. Sometimes I’ve run into Jim Kleinsasser’s friends in Carrington and they have nothing but good to say about him.

So why is it so different with Carson Wentz? Sure, he’s had some rough patches. We all do. We’re human and humans get injured like Wentz has.

So now he’s washed up because of an injury that happened several years ago. I’m sarcastically guessing those Carson Wentz haters out there have played professional football themselves and have been injured on the playing field like Wentz was.

If not, they’ve got no business bashing him. Like the saying goes, unless you walk in his moccasins, you aren’t entitled to a negative opinion.

I’m sure many of you know that Carson Wentz has been doing commercials for First Western Bank & Trust across the state. Some of them have actually been pretty creative and if I was the public relations firm for the bank, I’d have to say they picked the right candidate for their TV spots.

But back to Carson himself. He just hasn’t found the right team. Players in any major sport get traded all the time. He just has to find the right niche.

I always thought he’d be a great draw as a Minnesota Viking. Can you imagine all the North Dakota people who would come out and support him?

There are a lot of Denver Broncos fans in North Dakota. He’d be quite popular there too. He would also fit into just about every Canadian Football League team, and could singlehandedly turn the Calgary Stampeders into a winning franchise again.

So to these armchair quarterbacks; you do realize that a player will play better and have better mental focus when they’re in a position they like and are comfortable playing. Maybe you don’t realize that Carson wasn’t comfortable playing in Philadelphia or Washington. Despite making a lot of money, he wasn’t comfortable.

Instead of a minority of shallow opinions, we should celebrate Carson Wentz for getting as far as he did. It isn’t easy playing college football and much harder yet playing in the NFL. He’s done something a lot of us would never be able to do.

I don’t know, you go ahead and say what you want, but I put him up there with Travis Hafner, Weston Dressler and Jim Kleinsasser.

(Marvin Baker is a news writer for the Kenmare News and formerly Foster County Independent.)