Originally Posted By barboy ///But does he have to be so damn disrespectful?!/// hmmmm???? I just don't view ecdc as 'disrespectful' as a poster..... he hasn't been rude or abrasive in his offerings----at least the ones I've read. I've seen mild sarcasm properly placed from time to time(like most of us have used) and some outspoken commentary(again, like most of us) but everythng seems to be delivered within the boundaries of the 'playing field' -------just my take anyway.
Originally Posted By Tikiduck Even though I played football back in school, I never understood why people made it such a big deal. I remember after losing a game, some of us team members went to a party afterwards. When our coach found out, he went ballistic! I guess he figured we should go into mourning and hack off our little fingers in an act of penitence. He was old school though, a star running back at Cal the last year they played without face masks.
Originally Posted By gurgitoy2 This is also not a uniquely American thing. In fact, we can seem downright tame compared to football (soccer) fans around the world. The displays of violence can be pretty shocking, and the extreme fanaticism, I think, can be even more over the top than American sports fans. Granted, I don't think any other country spends as much on professional sports as we do, but the rabid fans are pretty much the same. Maybe it is a tribal thing, and it's something innate in us? I don't know, but it is kind of disturbing.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>This is also not a uniquely American thing. In fact, we can seem downright tame compared to football (soccer) fans around the world. The displays of violence can be pretty shocking, and the extreme fanaticism, I think, can be even more over the top than American sports fans.<< Yes, thank you for pointing this out. Of course some sports fans can get too carried away at times, and sometimes mayhem is created not by fans so much as people using a celebration for cover to stir up trouble. But this case is about an actual player hitting a ref, and it isn't about sports fanaticism. It's about poor sportsmanship -- a young player that either was never tight that winning isn't everything, or the message didn't get through. Last night, I attended the San Jose Sharks playoff game and they swept the Canucks. Immediately following the game, the two teams formed a handshake line with each other. This is what pros generally do, and there needs to be much more of it at every level of sports. Play the game, put it all out on the field, and then when it's over, be gracious in victory or defeat.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Immediately following the game, the two teams formed a handshake line with each other. This is what pros generally do, and there needs to be much more of it at every level of sports.<< But saying this incident has nothing to do with sports fanaticism sounds an awful lot like, "This particular gun shooting has nothing to do with our gun culture." I have no doubt that the vast, vast majority of sporting events go off without a hitch. I have no doubt that the vast, vast majority of sports fans are reasonable, good people who have no intention of getting violent. Ditto players. But the same can be said for gun owners. In my estimation, the issue isn't the percentages of deaths or incidents that happen (30,000 gun deaths a year is, after all, only .03% of gun owners...), but the fact that incidents happen at all because we have a culture that tolerates and even celebrates certain things it shouldn't. Most reasonable people can point out that we have an American gun culture that is harmful, even if we don't always agree on the best approach. I think we have an American sports culture that is, in many ways, harmful, and we ought to address it. I don't think, again, that you can separate an incident like that from this larger American sports culture.
Originally Posted By hopemax I'm going to join in and say, I don't think the issue is a sports culture issue. It's the same "me first" narcissism culture that is infecting everything else from kids running around everywhere without supervision, to at least anecdotally people less respectful of even following basic laws of traffic safety, to you name it. I've said before that we take "law & order" for granted in this country. It requires the willing participation of the collective to "play along." And what happens when people stop playing along? This is a classic "correlation does not equal causation" situation. People behave badly everywhere these days, of course you would then have incidents at sporting events. If this is a sporting event issue, then it would mean, that there is a large enough group of fans who think that it's okay to go after a ref. And that just doesn't happen. Everyone knows in every sport that going after a ref gets you in serious trouble. Also, in just about every sport (hockey excepted) everyone knows it's not okay to go after a player. Or for people in the stands to go after each other. That's different than the gun culture, where if you ask people, "is it okay to shoot someone." The answer comes back, "it depends." That goes to show there is some level of tolerance of shooting people with guns. People don't do that with sports. It's always, "No, it's not okay to take someone out in sports" (except for some reason hockey and sometimes throwing at people in baseball but even in both of those cases it's less tolerated than it was 30 years ago)
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>but the fact that incidents happen at all because we have a culture that tolerates and even celebrates certain things it shouldn't.<< I don't disagree that sports in general has been elevated out of proportion to its actual value. But in this incident, we're talking specifically about a kid who did not like a call and rather than moving on afterward, he got violent. I am reasonably sure he did not intend to kill the ref, but I would also not be surprised that he has been a terrible sport always. Perhaps it was a winning is the only thing mindset coaches or friends or family injected. A lot of people get very angry at the "everyone gets a trophy" thing that happens with very little kids in organized sports. But the good thing about that is that the stakes are not so high at an early age. Kids get a chance to learn first that it's only a game. Yeah, I know that can go too far, and at older ages, it's appropriate to introduce that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, either because of or in spite of your best efforts. That's life. Bt this incident happened because this kid either never learned or never heard enough that it's only a game and that win or lose, one must be a good sport, not an angry jerk.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf <<I think we have an American sports culture that is, in many ways, harmful, and we ought to address it.>> Don't you think the sports aspect of our culture is simply an extension of our competitivenes as a society? Capitalism teaches that everythng is a competition. The economic winners are the ones with executive titles, stock options, the biggest homes, the best addresses, etc. Sports seems to be an outlet for excessive competitiveness. Like dreaming being a way for our brain to burn off excessive brain activity, sports seems to be a way for society to burn off excessive competiteveness that accumulates in our everyday lives.
Originally Posted By Tikiduck One thing that does freak me out is the level of worship and adulation, or venomous hatred some fans place on players. I don't care what anyone says, that is just plain psychotic. Also, is not the level of domestic violence increased dramatically after local sports teams lose big games?
Originally Posted By ecdc >>That's different than the gun culture, where if you ask people, "is it okay to shoot someone." The answer comes back, "it depends." That goes to show there is some level of tolerance of shooting people with guns.<< I think that's a fair point, but I still think the analogy holds. If you asked a gun owner, "Is it okay to shoot your spouse," or "Is it okay for a kid to accidentally shoot another kid," the answers are obvious. The real issue is that people continue to see these events as separate from themselves and the cultures they participate in. Gun owners always want gun deaths to be separate from the gun culture. They see the gun culture as a group of responsible, reasonable people, ergo, irresponsible people are outside the culture. And yet, we still have a society that tolerates this. If we didn't tolerate it, these deaths, at least at this scale, wouldn't happen. I think it's the same way with the sports culture. People see the insanity as outside of themselves. THEY don't spend $30,000 on Superbowl tickets. They don't punch or scream or yell. They encourage and see good sportsmanship, so poor sportsmanship is outside of the culture. I don't think it's that simple.
