Throw Down in Motown
I'm as big a sports fan as anyone on this blog I'm guessing, but even I think that this country's obsession with sports has gone too far.
Did anyone see that fight in the stands in Detroit last night? Fans attacking players, players punching their way through the crowds, cops threatening to mace the players if they didn't stop pummeling the fans.
What's with all the pent-up anger from the fans? Because your team is losing, you decide to take matters into your own hands and throw things at the players?
The word "fan" is derived from "fanaticism", but I think there is something else other than misplaced team pride coursing through all of this behavior, and I would be interested to hear some theories on what it is.
Fortunately, the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on bad behavior from sports fans. Did you see the story about the Spanish soccer fans hurling a barrage of racial epithets at the black soccer players on the English team earlier this week? Nice.
Did anyone see that fight in the stands in Detroit last night? Fans attacking players, players punching their way through the crowds, cops threatening to mace the players if they didn't stop pummeling the fans.
What's with all the pent-up anger from the fans? Because your team is losing, you decide to take matters into your own hands and throw things at the players?
The word "fan" is derived from "fanaticism", but I think there is something else other than misplaced team pride coursing through all of this behavior, and I would be interested to hear some theories on what it is.
Fortunately, the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on bad behavior from sports fans. Did you see the story about the Spanish soccer fans hurling a barrage of racial epithets at the black soccer players on the English team earlier this week? Nice.
posted by cvo @ 11:03 AM
3 Comments:
At 8:38 AM,
R said…
From what Curtis wrote, he seems to be focusing on the fans. Clearly those fan-atics throwing cups etc. were jerks. It doesn't excuse the players going into the stands. Even between two "ordinary" folks, if you throw a cup at me, I'm not supposed to pummel you - that goes way beyond "self-defense." Attacking fans is especially egregious, and happened in baseball this year too, by the way, but we also had the enormous fight at the Clemson - SC game yesterday, where the players just pushed aside the cops while attacking each other. With events like this, it becomes hard to argue against the percepetion that many if not most professional players are just a bunch of thugs. Where have you gone, David Robinson?
At 9:09 AM,
cvo said…
No doubt, Ron Artest should NOT have gone into the stands just because a fan threw a cup of Coke at him, but I guess I'm focusing on the fans because it seems like there's a lot of resentment between fans and players that didn't use to exist even 20 years ago.
I'm guessing it has a lot to do with the money that professional athletes make these days and the fact that they all realize that their money comes from TV and endorsements, NOT ticket prices. Therefore, they don't feel the need to meet or connect with the fans in any way. When's the last time you saw an NBA player stop before or after the game to sign an autograph for a kid?
This same kind of incident happened a couple of years ago when a drunk Cubs fan stole the cap off of a Dodger player's head and the player (Chad Krueter) went into the stands and started punching the fan. The Detroit incident was much worse, especially because other fans retaliated by coming onto the court and challenging the players to a fight.
Artest and Clark ought to be suspended for the rest of the season for their actions, but fans need to reassess their priorities in life and not take out their pent-up anger on overpaid athletes. Just think if they channeled all that rage into something useful like protest marches or civil disobedience? Then we might see Rumsfeld or Cheney duking it out with angry protesters. Now THAT I would pay to see.
At 4:43 AM,
jmeriwether said…
Curtis is correct when he says the US doesn't have a monnopoly on scary behavior. In my world travels in the early 90's I was never more frightened then when I shared a train from Dover to London with a bunch of UK or possibly Scottish soccer hooligans coming from a game on the Continent. This was fan on establishment violence, not player on fan violence, but it was still very very scary.
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