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Be of good cheer There's a fine line between fans and fools
Updated: Monday January 29, 2001 11:28 AM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. As I sat, bleary-eyed, in Baltimore/Washington International Airport early Sunday morning, some 11 hours before Kickoff XXXV, my eyes fell upon the specter of four gentlemen heading for the gate that would take them to the Promised Land. They weren't the white-collar types who could afford a week of cocktailing from corporate tent to corporate tent. They were day-trippers, guys who had somehow come up with Super Bowl tickets and were heading out on game day, ready to cheer their spleens out, then sack out at some Ramada and return on Monday, full of beer, bratwurst and memories. They were between 30 and 35 years old. As a unit, they took off their jackets to reveal Ravens jerseys, each different. There was Ray Lewis's 52, of course, and Rod Woodson's 26. I didn't catch the other two because I was laughing too hard. They looked so ridiculous, those burly men in purple at so early an hour, so childish, so ... Yet something about them stirred envy in me. I've never had a team about which I cared so passionately that I would wear its jersey. And it's not just because I'm an allegedly objective sports writer or because I don't look good in jerseys. There's just no team that, in the words of Joni Mitchell, is in my blood like holy wine. I've never lived in a big-league city, nor did I attend a Division I university where life and death was measured by wins and losses on a football field or a basketball court, and so I have a kind of I-don't-quite-get-it reaction to the true believers. There's no question fans are the lifeblood of sports -- no butts in the seats, no $252 mil for A-Rod -- but there's no question that they've also been responsible for so many perversions at sporting events over the years. Did you see the story about the person who wants to nominate soccer for a Nobel Peace Prize, a sport in which scores of fans have died because of rioting? In the days before I spotted these Ravens guys at the airport, I had watched college basketball games at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium and Maryland's Cole Field House, and was reminded of how wafer-thin the line is between good fans and fools. At Duke last Wednesday night, a student had gotten hold of a grade-school photo of Robert O'Kelley, who plays guard for that night's opponent, Wake Forest. He had pasted it onto a large piece of cardboard along with this message written in huge black letters: MISSING: ROBERT O'KELLEY'S SHOT! The Duke fans, befitting their reputation as irritating yet innocuous jackasses, never sat down, never shut up and, at one point, serenaded Wake's diminutive coach Dave Odom with a chorus of "LI-TUL COACH! LI-TUL-COACH!" The Cameron Crazies are young and original and fun, and, though they may cross the bounds of good taste now and then, they are what fans are supposed to be. Three nights later in Cole, the atmosphere was tense, anxious, mean-spirited even. Dozens of older men wearing sweater vests of Maryland red sat courtside and baited the refs. Nothing original, nothing fun. Just old, white-guy venom. When the game was over, dozens of fans reacted to an agonizing Terps loss by throwing drink cartons and wadded-up programs and newspapers toward the court in general and the Duke parents' section in particular. Carlos Boozer's mother was hit by a glass bottle and the mothers of Duke guards Jason Williams and Chris Duhon were both hit by plastic bottles. It was ugly, it was stupid and I know I sound like your Aunt Sally when I say it's a wonder someone wasn't seriously hurt. Maryland's sports information director called to say that the university takes such matters seriously, and I have no doubt that is the case. Truth is, there's not a lot institutions can do to ensure that their fans don't become public menaces. Stop selling water? Put every fan through rigorous security? Play the games at noon and don't allow anyone in, a measure that has been tried many times by high school teams with combustible rivalries? If the fans at Cole justify their actions by what happens at Cameron, they are wrong. Posters and chants and adrenaline-charged cheers are different than turning refreshments into weapons. If you don't know that, then stay home, take off that stupid red sweater vest, and bust up your TV set if things don't go the way you think they should. As for the guys in purple, I'd like to think they had a good time and celebrated the Ravens' rout with all good cheer. (But I still think they looked stupid.) Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the
writer.
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