I’ve seen tables flipped, tv sets punched through, furniture thrown. And that’s just in the home.
How does one get to a place mentally where burning and destroying things, over a sportsball game seem a reasonable thing to do?
The easiest, but not necessarily the most applicable answer, is that it is possible to wager money on the outcome of sports games. Very large sums of money. Ruinous, life-altering sums.
The more common answer is that this is a sense of personality for some people. They identify with a certain sports team and spend a lot of their time cheering them on and building up the belief that they are the best team, undefeatable under any fair circumstance. When that team loses, they then take it personally. After all, if their team lost, could it mean they’re not actually the best team? Did I choose wrong?
No. Impossible. It’s those damn referees, blind as they are, missing the most obvious fouls and treating my team unfairly, punishing my team’s players more harshly for the tiniest infractions. Nay, not even that; my team didn’t break the rules; it’s that other team’s fault!
&c., &c., until you get bored.
It isn’t reasoning driving these decisions. It’s emotion. And before any of us get too haughty about it, it’s also a very human reaction. Humans were not designed to reason, we were designed to feel. And yes, everyone has a set of circumstances that will cause their logical processing to shut off and allow emotion to take control. It just might not be sports.
What’s sportsball?
Perjorative term for all sports.
Mostly internet and I would imagine strongly correlated with those who are still angry they had an unpleasant high school experience.
Or those who think there’s an absurd amount of money and resources devoted to literally nothing productive. Every time the fuck cars people post about stadiums I really want to bitch about people who don’t live near or out in the country but seriously there’s WAY to much money spent on these places and events.
I really hate the “non productive” argument as you only see it with sports, not say, the video game or movie/tv industries. Just has this real whiff of “I don’t like this activity and I don’t see why anyone else should!”
Of all the non productive uses of money and time, at least sports has a bunch of ancillary benefits, especially for youth. I don’t imagine youth sports leagues, which keep kids in shape, keeps them doing something positive instead of the usual juvenile delinquent stuff we’d have been doing, teaching them to be a part of a team etc. And then those stadiums tend to get used for a bunch of cultural/musical events.
I dunno.
But I work in contract security. When the Super Bowl came to Minneapolis, it was one of the worst nights of My working-life.
I was walking through a bar to touch bases with their management (the bar was tenants of my client,) and a philly fan broke a bottle off and tried to shank me. That was the night before. All I did to provoke it? Walk behind him.
Another incident the night before, 3 guys were kicking the shit out of an oldish guy while two howling wives egged them on.
They were late twenties early thirties, their victim was a late-50’s black guy.
Their only “reason”? He was wearing a Vikings cap.
Over all, the only night that we had more arrests happen was when the city decided to set up a soft checkpoint for a trump rally with a day’s notice to my client next door.
When ever I start listing incidents other Philly fans are quick to say “no we’re just passionate!”
Green Bay is passionate. They dress up in their cosplay and drink all the beer then go home. (Though, probably some of the best tailgating you’ve ever seen…) they don’t beat the shit out of people.
As a philly native, I will say that the vast majority of philly fans are more reasonable levels of passionate, I’ve never personally been around anyone getting violent over a game, at worst just a lot of yelling and cursing directed at no one in particular.
But yeah, our worst fans definitely have a way of going the extra mile into the heart of crazytown.
Philly has a tough image and we’re proud of it and embrace it, but a lot of assholes don’t understand that being tough doesn’t mean being needlessly violent, offensive, and destructive.
Personally, I like the lunatics here that climb light poles and think of the city greasing them up as a challenge, that’s the kind of crazy fan I want to represent my city.
Really. A native and you’ve never personally seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7sW-0D_qhI
I only knew of one but after googling there appears to have been a few.
Yeah, astonishingly if you don’t wander into the crowded center city areas that are packed with people and bars, things are a lot more subdued.
There’s something 1½ million people in the city, a lot of whom are watching the game, either at home, in a friends house, or at one of the 1300 or so bars in the city, all spread out over about 140 square miles. If you don’t go seeking out the craziness, it’s easy to not see it in person.
Not to mention all of the eagles fans in the surrounding suburbs.
And take a good look at your video, how much actual violence or destructiveness are you seeing there? I’m seeing mostly a big crowd of people milling around outside chanting and yelling at no one in particular. Creating a nuisance or impeding traffic? Sure, hardly a riot or anything of the sort though.
You have, being generous, maybe a couple thousand people (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more people turn out to ride in the Philly naked bike ride) gathering around city hall, a major landmark located in the very heart of the city, and doing what? yelling? Maybe 2% of a city where “go birds” passes as a greeting, wandering around outside being a bit rowdy.
that didn’t take long.
I mean, seriously. You’re aware that after a 49er’s game that turned violent, Eagles added jail cells - oh I’m sorry, the proper term is “holding cell”- to deal with all that… “passion”. and… no. I don’t mean a holding room that locks. they had full on jail cells. and before that, Veteran’s Field didn’t just have jail cell- it had a full on court room.
There’s also those incidents with the D-cell batteries. Plural. Totally normal fan-rivalry things to do. totally.
then there’s that time that eagle’s fans beat up Cheif Zee (redskin’s super fan.)- broken legs, ribs, and other injuries.
And what the fuck did Millie ever do to get harassed by crowds of phillie fans? she was a 90+ year old grandmother for crying out loud. the only thing she did to get the attention was get recognized for being an old vikings fan. Even then you had to drag out your geriatric fan and that wasn’t enough?
sure. Not all eagle’s fans are total assholes. most fans “aren’t that bad”. But you do realize, when other teams say the same thing, they’re talking about people that are singing a little too loud, or shouting obnoxious jingles or maybe they just got a little drunk. (I’m not kidding about packer’s fans drinking all the beer.)
You should see what happens when political tribalism takes place in the United States.
Strong emotions and financial strain with the working class at an all-time high, disdain towards other groups, and fights break out.
Assassination attempts and murder of activists and politicians due to disagreements.
I think it goes back to dividing the working class and keeping us entertained so we don’t pay attention to the status quo.
The sportsball team you cheer for is your tribe.
Your tribe meets up to go to war against other tribes regularly, you wear the same colors to recognize each other.
The goal is to beat the other tribe, show them who’s boss and acquire the shiny thing at the end.
The great thing is, you don’t even have to do anything to be part of the tribe, except wear the right colors and cheer (or boo) at the right time.
It’s a pretty civilized way to channel our stone-age tribal urges into something that happens on a weekend, doesn’t interfere with your work, and can even be turned into profit. And sometimes a few things break, but that’s much better than the constant bloody feuds that were normal during most of human history.
