Mayer: Unruly fans have much to learn
With new college football and basketball seasons at hand, there is less concern in some quarters about the behavior of the players and coaches than about the intemperance and muckerism of fans, old and young, and particularly the alcoholically saturated.
For the most part, Kansas University spectators have a long record of acting civilized and displaying a reasonable sense of responsibility. But things can change during those postgame goalpost attacks, at any school.
And the Big 12 Conference is festered with disgusting groups like The Antlers at Missouri. For the most part, however, our league comes off looking pretty well in view of the events other schools have had to endure.
There’s a book on this troubling subject: “Fan Etiquette: How Did the Burning Desire to Win Become the Desire to Burn?” The main author is Will Keim, Ph.D., with the aid of behaviorists Lynn Lashbrook, who has a doctorate in education, and Eileen Sullivan, Ph.D.
I’m grateful to Lawrence’s Phil Friedeman for making it available. A retired pastor, Phil is a knowledgeable and devoted sports follower and observer and is worried about where things could be headed, from little leagues on up.
As Keim reminds us, the athletic department is the front porch of a university — not the heart and soul of a school, since teaching and research are assigned those roles. He believes good sports programs can do much for a school. Yet he follows with this sobering prospect: Fanatic behavior is threatening to set the front porch on fire.
“It is time to step up bravely and douse the flame of abusive behavior before it burns down the house,” Keim says.
Keim played baseball at University of the Pacific and now is an intercollegiate chaplain for the Disciples of Christ in Corvallis, Ore., site of Oregon State. Keim is called in by a lot of schools and organizations to analyze crowd behavior and to talk to people about ways to alter sociopathic tendencies.
The sad thing about Keim’s book is that most of those who really need to peruse and ponder never will do so. They’re too imbued with the zest of misbehavior to fritter away time on such “silliness.” So they’ll continue to get tanked up and keep offending, threatening and endangering innocent people.
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Get the stats: KU vs. Tulsa box scoreI think we can agree that substance abuse, mainly alcohol, factors in many, many ugly sports-related events, from high school on through the pros. One of the needs is to bring this issue under better control. The prospects are not overwhelming.
Providing the foreword for the Keim book on fan etiquette is Steve Kerr, who wears five NBA title rings, thanks mainly to Michael Jordan’s role as a teammate. He played college ball at Arizona.
As a freshman at ‘Zona, he got a call early one morning. His father, president of the American University in Beirut, had been gunned down by a group of Islamic militants who didn’t happen to like Americans. That was Kerr’s personal 9-11.
Devastated, Kerr remained a good student, was a fine player at Arizona and not long ago retired as a pro shooting whiz. In ’97, he took a pass from Sir Michael with six seconds left and poked in the shot that thwarted the Utah Jazz bid for the pro title. Yet he still had shivers from a 1988 incident, thanks to a group of dishonorable Arizona State fans.
While AU was warming up, an ASU group mocked his father’s death with such clever chants as “PLO! PLO! Where’s your daddy?” He went to the bench and cried, tough kid that he was. He also helped beat ASU that night.
Word got out about the miserable incident and about a week later he got an unsigned letter from an A-State fan who’d mocked him. The writer offered a half-assed apology but tried to justify his actions with: “Do you know how painful it’s been to see Arizona athletes being so cocky after beating us over the years?” That is pain?
Says Kerr for fans everywhere: “Cheer hard, with passion, and hope your team wins. But if they lose, always remember that it’s just a game.”
For aberrational logic, consider this view of a Minnesota student who not long ago declared: “Riots are in the top three memorable college times of my life. When else do you see all those students come together and do one thing?” I shudder to think what his top two experiences might be. This clown would fit right in with some of those unsigned ‘Net heroes.
Some people I know have decided to stop taking wives and children to sporting events, especially the pro venues, because of the drinking, profanity, ugliness and threats to loved ones’ safety that erupt among such fools. These bums may not be numerous, but you easily can find them at college games, including some sites in the Big 12. You also can spot some at non-school events and junior high and high school contests.
What’s to be gained through such “appetites for destruction?” Coaches, players, school officials and concerned alumni and friends can call for improvement, more civility and courtesy and a cutback in alcohol excess but until far more individuals vow to combat such behavior, we have to ask ourselves how long such disgrace will continue.
Sadly, things may have to get a lot worse before enough people force them to get any better. The front porch is in danger of incineration; it’s going to take a lot of well-motivated firefighters to prevent its being torched.