College football fans take their teams seriously, what with poisoning iconic trees on a rival team’s campus and general stupidity on the majority of Internet message boards, and yet it’s tough to imagine Nick Saban resigning as coach of the University of Alabama because of death threats from fans. But that’s what happened to Frank Schaefer, soccer coach of Cologne of the Bundesliga in Germany, who called it a day with three games left in the season after spectators – worried that losses might relegate the team to a lower division – left this charming sign in Cologne’s practice area on Monday: “If you go down we’ll kill you.”
Yeah, those Europeans take their soccer a wee bit seriously. But hey, they don’t have capital punishment over there, so they’re obviously more civilized than us…