Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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I'm going to go out on a crazy limb and say that the fight in the Pistons-Pacers game isn't just a sports-page issue — it's a front-page issue.

And while I think NBA Commissioner David Stern and the local authorities appear to have the legal side of that ugly, ugly spectacle handled, I think there is room for our political and cultural leaders to weigh in here as well.

We have seen, year by year, decade by decade, the experience of watching a sporting event in this country change dramatically, and it is not for the better.

Sports - both professional and collegiate - have gotten uglier. Ticket prices have exploded, of course. Maybe that increased cost has created a sense of entitlement among some fans — I paid fifty bucks for this ticket, I’m going to chant the F-bomb as many times as I like.

I’ve gone to games wearing the jersey or hat of the visiting team — sometimes the ribbing is good natured, but increasingly, a four-letter dismissal of my team and me is considered the appropriate response. I know a lot of folks who wouldn’t wear the wrong team’s apparel to a game- why run the risk of running into a drunken lout looking for a fight?

Is it the beer sales? Well, obviously that is part of this phenomenon, but there’s always been beer sales at games, and pre-game tailgating, etc. Maybe there is less shame about being drunk in public. (The apparently widespread ability to get punch-throwingly drunk on stadium beer surprises me, though. The beer at most stadiums isn’t exactly Guinness, if you catch my drift. Just how many cups of this stuff do you have to drink to get inebriated?)

But excessive drinking alone doesn’t explain the ugliness in sports crowds these days. Not everyone in that Detroit crowd was hammered. And the type of behavior we saw at its worst that night has manifested itself in a lot of other stadiums and arenas around the country. Why has heckling — that word actually elevates this practice — swearing and taunting the opponent become a national pastime as much as the games themselves?

Why has a national championship become a preface for rioting in some cities? (I say rather confidently that a Jets Super Bowl win (may Dad and I live that long) will not be followed by urban anarchy. In fact I suspect that the morning after a Jets championship, Gang Green fans will sit around and lament that A) how Paul Hackett’s [or insert unpopular coach’s name here] play calling nearly cost them the win; B) now the team is in terrible position for next year’s draft; C) how hard it is to repeat as champions; and D) how every other team will try to sign away our players in free agency. The Russian-level-fatalism is hardwired into our DNA.)

One of my favorite sports columnists, Michael Wilbon, put it this way Saturday:

The NBA is facing serious, serious issues, problems bigger than fan arrests and player suspensions can repair. A season that began with Latrell Sprewell suggesting he would be hard-pressed to feed his family on $10 million a year, then continued with Ron Artest wanting to take a month off from playing to promote his upcoming CD degenerated into the unspeakable Friday night in Detroit.

No, it's not the first time professional athletes and fans have battled in the stands in this country. But the prolonged, fist-swinging, chair-slinging, bottle-throwing episode that rolled from the court to the stands back to the court, and finally to the tunnel leading to the locker room, is probably the ugliest, most violent episode players and fans have been involved in. And it leaves the NBA facing the question of what in the world to do about several Pacers players who charged into the stands, the deteriorating relationship between players and paying customers, and the increasing perception that the league is full of young, underachieving, unprofessional, richer-than-ever, thug divas unable to maintain the level of play established by the previous generation's stars.

I would disagree a bit with the rhetoric from some sports columnists about how fans can’t relate to ultra-rich athletes anymore. Have you seen the prices of courtside, or even lower-level seats to NBA games lately? Friday night we saw rich thuggish fans throw beer at a rich thuggish player, and then an all-out return to ‘nasty, brutish and short’ rule-by-force in the ensuing melee by the whole rich, thuggish lot of them. The only guys making a “normal” salary at that game were the poor security guards and cops stuck in the middle of it all.

Over the weekend, I came across something I wrote years ago that “sports stadiums are society’s designated place for men to act emotionally.” In the workplace, you’re supposed to be professional, reserved, appropriate, proper. In the arena, you can shout yourself hoarse, boo and tell the other team they stink, applaud until your hands are raw for that big defensive stop and then high-five and perhaps even hug the stranger in the seat next to you when your team makes that come-from-behind winning touchdown.

But it’s a matter of cheering or booing. That’s it. Who in their right mind would think they have the authority — or the right — to storm onto the court and physically confront a player they dislike?

Or is this brought on by the criminal subculture of professional athletics, the Dennis Rodmans, the Ray Lewises, the Jamal Lewises, the reports of drug use, steroid use, the groupies, the five children from four women, none of which have the title, “wife”? Does this spur inebriated fans, already angry that their overpriced tickets are paying the unimaginably high salary of a slacking player, to see players as some sort of personal enemy?

Is there a sense that the traditional authorities of the game - the referees, the coaches, the league officials - seem so helpless to stem this tide of no-rules-apply-to-me ‘thug divas’ that Wilbon refers to, that the fans have to become some sort of vigilantes?

Whatever it is, it has to stop.

Now… let me go out on another crazy limb and suggest that there is room for a political figure to make an impact on this issue. Not necessarily by introducing legislation (although it would be nice to make clear that throwing a bottle or cup at someone in an arena is every bit the crime it would be outside), but by talking about where we’re going as a society.

America doesn’t ask a lot of its citizens. We don’t have a draft, we have comparatively low taxes, we don’t have compulsory voting. But we do have certain rules that you have to follow as a citizen, certain expectations of behavior — and one’s passion for a sports team doesn’t waive those expectations.

Is the ugliness we see in the world of sports completely unrelated to the ugliness we see in politics? If you can be consumed with hatred for an opposing sports team and act from that hate, are you more likely to be consumed with hatred for an opposing political party or leader?

I think the American public will react well to a political leader who declares this unacceptable, and these declining standards of acceptable public behavior as a real societal problem.

Somehow, I suspect the bluest of blue state Democrats will see the thuggery as ‘deeply emotional expressions of authenticity of the violent, confrontational life of the professional athlete’ or some such nonsense. (Perhaps the reddest of the red would contend Ron Artest, the guy who was lying on the scorer’s table, deserved to have a beer thrown at him.) I hope I’m wrong.

UPDATE: Kerry Spot reader John adds:

I think one further cause of it that is worth mentioning: Dick Vitale/ESPN. (I use them for convenience only. There are others.) Today, we have our announcers and sports anchors glorifying horrible fan behavior where fans become "part of the game" instead of mere spectators. Look at Vitale's admiration for the "Cameron Crazies" at Duke University basketball games who spend more time taunting the opposition than cheering their own team. These "fans" taunt opposing players with racial remarks ("J.R can't read" to a black UNC player) or other distasteful "group cheers" ("P-L-O, P-L-O" to Steve Kerr of the Univ of Arizona whose parents were killed by that terrorist organization) and relish their role as "6th man".

(UPDATE: According to this report, it was Arizona State fans that did the P-L-O chant.)

I also note Frank Deford's comment: "Duke students have become famous for being inventive with their invective. At various times, saluting rival players who have been caught at some malefaction, Dookies have hurled women's underwear, aspirin, pizza boxes, sneakers and condoms onto the court. (You do not need to know the particulars.) For an opponent who had suffered a collapsed lung, the Dookies yelled, "IN-hale! EX-hale!" Go on, it's O.K. to laugh at that. That's pretty good. And the kid had recovered."

I've heard from quite a few Duke fans saying the Cameron Crazies aren't so bad. I don't endorse John's opinion, I just put it out there for discussion. Draw your own conclusions, I don't mean to pick on Duke. Then again, they don't call them the "Cameron Enthusiastic But Still Appropriates.")

With Vitale praising their "spirit" as a model of what a college basketball fan should be, it is any wonder that other fans are now trying to outdo such nonsense?

We have to get back to the days of fans cheering on their own team instead of trying to humiliate the opposition. That Duke University fans are held up as a model says all you need to know about what is wrong with sports today.

Jon observes:

Guinness in all likelihood has a lower alcohol content than most domestic mass-market beers, somewhere between 4 and 5 percent alcohol by volume. In comparison, I think Miller Lite is somewhere around 5.5 percent. Although there is a common misconception that Guinness is a "strong" beer, it is actually a relatively low alcohol beer, "session-able" as the Brits would say.

Huh. I learn something new every day.

Kerry Spot reader Tom wonders if the fans involved in Friday's incident were the wealthy courtside seat buyers:

This game was a blowout. The fights occurred at the end when much of the stands had emptied. In the best tradition of sports, I'm sure many of the courtside seats at that time were occupied by those with rafter tickets who had sneaked into the better locations because the season ticket holders had already left. They may all be rich as well but I think some of them only earn "normal" salaries like your security personnel.

Obviously rich spectators can act like jerks. A famous Hollywood director is reputedly famous for jawing and provoking opposing players from his courtside seat at the Knicks games, although he has never been involved in more than verbal altercations. No doubt some rich people in Detroit are capable of going way beyond that and doing the type things we saw Friday night.

My perspective might be skewed by the local Wizards prices, where the third-worst upper deck seats are $48 per ticket at the gate. The next worst are $40, and the last six rows in the nosebleed upper deck sections, behind the net, are $10. That's for the 25 win, 57 loss last season Washington Wizards.

[Posted 11/22 01:53 PM]