Why don’t we Americans have fan protests?

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If there’s a Chicago Cubs of England, it would be the Newcastle United soccer club, up in the northeast, not too far from the North Sea.

Despite enduring support that runs the gamut from crazed to rabid, the ‘Magpies’ haven’t won a major domestic title since spring 1955 which, given that English soccer clubs play for three cups per year, amounts to a title drought of 156 cups, which makes the Cubs seem lightly parched by contrast.

For good measure, first-place Newcastle led Manchester United by 12 standings points with two months to go in the 1996-97 season but made a worthy impression of a sinkhole and lost the title, rather the protracted version of leading 3-2 in games in a National League Championship Series and then 3-0 in the eighth inning of Game 6, but suddenly giving up eight shocking runs.

Already in this nascent season that began Aug. 16, Newcastle has sunk to the relegation zone (bottom three teams in the 20-team league) and lost its beloved manager, Kevin Keegan, who resigned out of the very plausible inclination that he lacked the support of the team’s controlling board.

That sent the fans into an organized frenzy on Sept. 13.

after he resigned as the club’s manager. Credit: Lindsey Parnaby / EPA

The fans clogged the downtown of their lovely city with a protest, carrying signs and chanting and telling TV reporters the club had ruined their lives, as if that came as news to the rest of the country.

It was enough to get an American mulling how this still seems so exotic, how Cubs fans probably should’ve been holding protests for almost a century by now, how New York Jets fans should’ve marched on at least one of the Meadowlands parking lots, and how Americans might just be too individualistic or too comfortable or too something to stage such organized angst.

It also can get you thinking: What’s the ripest spot for a fan protest today? To start, you’d need freighted expectations mixed with unspeakably dour outcomes. Hint: big team, owns its city and region, just lost 30-6 to loathed Florida, and lost its opener to UCLA in what by now seems a human near-impossibility.

Why, if Knoxville were in England, its sleepy streets would teem with spite.

-- Chuck Culpepper