Root Responsibly For Your Favorite Team

As a kid, I never understood why my father was so against attending live sporting events. Not to say we didn't see our share of games at Yankee Stadium, the Meadowlands and Giants Stadium, but usually, we would watch the games on television together. Yet I always felt like I was missing something by not being at the game in person with my old man.
Over the past few years, I've realized exactly what I have missed by not being one of those "weekend warriors" that attend a game every Sunday. I've been able to miss obnoxious, drunken, thirty-something year-old fans that fall over themselves in the parking lots on their only day away from their wives; foul-mouthed twenty-something year-olds that would have no trouble trampling the eight year-old sitting next to them to catch a foul ball; and unknowledgeable teenage fans that scream and hiss if their team's star player doesn't hit a home run at every bat or throw a touchdown pass on every attempt.
Is it all the alcohol that is served at ludicrous prices at these events? It certainly doesn't help. I've seen fans drink a month's worth of beer before that 1 p.m. kickoff. I once attended a Jets-Titans Monday Night Football Game on a freezing November evening, in which the Jets won a thrilling game, and upon leaving the game I was encountered a shirtless, plump gentleman who stumbled up to my brother and asked, "So who won the game?"
He never even made it into the stadium. We told him the Bears won. He nodded and kept staggering on his path to who-knows-where.
But for all the horrors that alcohol produces, I'm not going to let fans off easy and just blame booze for this. Some ads will tell you to drink responsibly. I'm going to tell you to root responsibly.
Two weeks ago on the opening weekend for the NFL, I had the "pleasure" of attending the Jets game with some friends. As we walked to the stadium around 12:45 p.m. after briefly tailgating, I looked at the masses that were flocking to the Meadowlands and thought for a second I was in the opening scene from the 70s cult movie classic "The Warriors," which is about fictitious gangs from New York traveling in herds to a conclave. Many of the people walking beside me smelled like they took a bath in vodka and probably had more Pabst Blue Ribbon in their veins than blood.
And so the heckling began. As it should at a sporting events. A forty-something couple, walking in Patriots jerseys, were being followed and hissed at by Jets fans. Seemed harmless at first.
I've been involved many times in "friendly" arguments with Yankee, Giants and Jets fans. That is my right as a paying customer. I can root for whomever I want, as I will walk on the moon before I root for the Yanks.
So I turned around to see the commotion about 20 yards behind me. I saw six thugs, in their twenties, start punching the man twenty years his senior, and as the Pats fan actually fought them off, he was repaid by being blasted over the head with a beer bottle.
The cowards, led by the fool in the Al Toon jersey, quickly scurried away and ran like children avoiding a parent's scolding. The Pats fan was left with blood trickling down his face and his wife on the pavement, as she had been knocked to the ground as well.
Security was nowhere to be found. No arrests were made. And I started thinking that could have been my parents, or aunt and uncle. All because they had on a different team's jersey.
I'm not just picking on the New York fans. We've all heard the horrors of what goes on at Philadelphia Eagles games or college games in the Midwest. This isn't "East Coast mentality"- it is now American behavior.
Two days later, I read about a Texas Longhorn fan who walked into a bar in Oklahoma with a U of T shirt on. He was quickly heckled and then attacked by a Sooners fan. His injury? A near castration. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.
And these aren't just "kids" getting involved in this type of nonsense. The man who was arrested for aggravated assault in this case was a 53 year-old federal auditor and Army veteran. Did I mention he was also a church deacon?
"I've actually heard callers on talk radio say that this guy deserved what he got for wearing a Texas T-shirt into a bar in the middle of Sooner country," Irven Box, an attorney near Norman, Oklahoma, told the Associated Press last week.
So it goes.
So before some of you trash sports like football and boxing for being two violent, take a look at the actions of soccer moms at the Pee-Wee level.
It makes me wonder if a gladiator in ancient Rome ever took a breather during his battle to the death, motioned at the crowd, and said to the other combatant, "Did you get a load of this crowd? Man, they are animals!"
So when my sister-in-law called me and asked me if I wanted two tickets to the Jets game this weekend, I told her no thanks, I'll sit in my Addidas pants on my couch and watch the NFL Ticket with the rowdy friends that I choose to hang out with.
I get it now, Dad. And if the day ever comes that I'm a parent and need to take my kids to a live sporting event, I'm simply going to cross my fingers and hope that the three drunken fans behind me pass out before halftime.