Fire Canada: The Story Behind the NFL’s New Favorite Meme

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are few professions with a shorter leash than the job of an NFL coach. The league is a results-based business with 32 teams all vying for a Super Bowl ring. So if you can’t build a perennial contender, you can pretty much expect to be looking for other work sooner rather than later, with the fans all too eager to see you go. That’s what’s going on right now in Pittsburgh, where offensive coordinator Matt Canada has drawn the ire of so many fans that the calls for his job have now transcended outside of the Acrisure Stadium walls. The chants and signs and memes have spread to Penguins games, wrestling matches, and NFL stadiums everywhere. So today, Steelers beat reporter Brooke Pryor joins the show to explain how the “Fire Canada” phenomenon started in the first place, how the unique psychology of Steelers fans catapulted it into the mainstream, and if the fun and games have gone too far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Brooke Pryor, you're our reporter on the Steelers Beat, and so we come to you today with
0:05.6	the very important question.
0:08.2	When do you first remember hearing the phrase, Fire Canada?
0:11.6	Oh, man, is he?
0:12.9	That is a great question because I feel like it is just a part of my everyday life now
0:17.2	and I don't know a time before it.
0:24.4	The first time would probably be during Ben Rothisberger's last season when the offense
0:30.3	just wasn't looking how they wanted it to look in Ben's final season and so there was
0:36.1	a struggle.
0:37.1	Do you blame the franchise quarterback or do you blame the new offensive coordinator?
0:41.3	And I think we all know which way the fans went.
0:44.5	Yeah, so it's not unusual for fans to express their dislike for a player or a coach or even
0:50.0	an owner publicly, but this has made the rounds everywhere, hasn't it?
0:55.4	What makes this situation so different?
0:57.8	Well, it started out as very much as Steelers, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it three
1:04.0	years ago when people were frustrated with Matt Canada's offense, particularly Steelers
1:09.6	fans.
1:10.6	And in the years since, it's really grown to become a national phenomenon and there was
1:16.7	a loud chant actually earlier this season at PPG Paint Serena.
1:22.0	That's not where the Steelers play.
1:23.9	That's where the Pittsburgh Penguins had their season opener and there was a stadium-wide
1:28.6	fire candidate chant there.
	...

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