Such a fine line with the relationship between fans and athletes. Fans are the reason they are rich and famous, but they also can be cruel and over the top in their fandom.
Social media has made it 100x worse because now fans have access to athletes they simply didn’t have before. Five years ago a fan in their living room could call Andre Johnson all types of names and he would never know, but now they can spam Johnson’s Twitter page with insults.
Johnson is a stand up guy, so I understand what he is saying in this quote.
“You have some that are loyal. You have some that are fair-weather, and they only come around when you win. I’ve been here when it was 2-14 and there was hardly anybody in the stands, so I really don’t care about what fans think. A lot of them don’t understand what players go through. They can talk about what they want to talk about.”
One thing I will say, being a loyal fan doesn’t mean you have put players on a pedestal, you should be able to criticize as long as you don’t make it personal.