Thug Mentality
When will teams realize that they are playing host when an opposing team comes to town? Being rude, picking fights, throwing piss, and basically acting like a jackass does nothing for your team’s cause. You are only being an idiot.
When you invite someone to your house, do you throw batteries at them? And if you do, what purpose does it serve?
The problem is that fans from certain schools are never taught to treat the visiting fans with respect. Take, oh… I don’t know… Ohio State for example. The fanbase in Columbus acted like thugs in 1995 when Notre Dame came to town and they still act like thugs today. The thug mentality is passed on from generation to generation, from senior to freshmen.
The only chance dirtbag fanbases have is when they go on the road and they see how it is done right. They visit Nebraska. Or Notre Dame. They are shown by example how to behave like rational human beings.
But unfortunately for the college football world and mankind, they do not learn. They regress back into the same slime, returning to their respective homes to teach a new generation of freshmen how to act.
El Kabong discusses this very issue in Welcome to Penn State? I Guess Not. It is an excellent read and spot on the money with an issue that I feel is the biggest negative to college football. It is all very sad.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:42 am
We tailgated at the PSU game with some Irish and Nittany Lions fans. Sure, we taunted our opponents, but it was all in good fun. I even sold my extra ticket to a PSU fan just so I can sit there at the game and watch him CRY. He got along great with the Irish fans in our section. All of the Penn State fans whom I met were in awe of the Notre Dame campus and being at the House that Rockne Built. I even exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers with a few of them and they promised to tailgate with us next September in Happy Valley. Being nasty like CW suggests does not mean being an asshole.
Boorish fan behavior can probably be attributed to a few things:
1. Overblown hype on TV, the Internet and the newspapers. How many “games of the year” can a team play? We are constantly bombarded with reminders that the fate of (insert team name here)’s season, its alma mater’s reputation and your existence as a fan hinges solely on Saturday’s game. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t sleep much last week in the days leading up to the game. Maybe I believed the hype.
2. Alcohol. To quote Homer Simpson, booze is the “cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Mix a morning marathon of pregame drinking with the aforementioned hype and you get people who are very pleasant and rational when sober acting like total asses.
3. Pressure to win NOW. The current BCS system leaves very, very little room for error. One loss, even in early September, can derail a team’s NC hopes (unlike college hoops, baseball and hockey). Fans know this and place a great deal of pressure on ADs and coaches. Since most fans never get the chance to interact with their school’s AD or football coach, it’s easier to take out their angst on opposing fans.
September 13th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Totally agree. I have never really understood the alcohol argument though. I drink plenty(my buddies will hurl Zima jokes soon after reading this) but never become abusive toward opposing fans. Maybe it’s just me.
I truly feel that the boorish fan behavior is passed down from one “generation” to the next. As a frosh at ND if I got out of line with an opposing fan, my older peers would have put me in line. If I saw seniors messing with opposing fans, I probably would have joined in. And I probably would well out of school.
November 2nd, 2006 at 7:43 am
[...] And the stories keep pouring in. From Michigan fans, Iowa fans, Texas fans, pretty much anyone that ever visits Columbus. Ohio State fans need to learn some class. It’s not like they haven’t been there before. The IRT weighed in on this earlier: The problem is that fans from certain schools are never taught to treat the visiting fans with respect. Take, oh… I don’t know… Ohio State for example. The fanbase in Columbus acted like thugs in 1995 when Notre Dame came to town and they still act like thugs today. The thug mentality is passed on from generation to generation, from senior to freshmen. [...]