Couch: Bad Fan Behavior Isn't Going Away Any Time Soon
Welcome back, sports fans! Fans are finally getting to go see their favorite teams and athletes again. They are so grateful that, in the NBA, they spit on players, throw bottles or popcorn at them, yell racist taunts and run onto the court. At the bucolic PGA Championship, fans engulf Brooks Koepka, attack his surgically repaired knee and grab Phil Mickelson’s head in celebration, forcing him to make a pretty impressive swim move before reaching the 18th green and making his last few shots.
“Slightly unnerving,’’ Mickelson called it. “But exceptionally awesome.’’
Meanwhile, the Chicago White Sox finally have a World Series-ready team and are in first place, so the fans erupt in the bleachers with women brawling and throwing punches.
Is this the new normal everyone was talking about? That’s the big question. I’m going to go with no, at least not to this extent. But yes, things have changed for good. Maybe “for good’’ is the wrong word. Let’s go with “permanently.”
Did you really expect the return to go smoothly? This was just so predictable, as our collective psyche has been pent up for a year in COVID isolation.
What the hell is happening here? The temperature is turned up now, and the crazies are going to be a little more crazy than usual.
But is it just people looking to blow off steam at various levels? Or is this a political response? Or maybe NBA fans were unhappy that their league was so social-justice focused last season -- jamming it down their throats -- and now they just finally have a chance to give the league a piece of their mind?
Yes, yes and yes. All of those things and more. People are tired of other people telling them how they’re supposed to think and behave. And when people have been socially distanced and locked up for a year, you can’t predict how they’re going to respond.
People want control of their lives back, and unfortunately a lot of people are doing it by justifying out-of-control behavior.
The worst, so far, has been a New York Knicks fan spitting on Atlanta’s Trae Young. That’s not only disgusting, but also an assault. Young has shown amazing restraint.
Kyrie Irving talked about the racism among Boston Celtics fans and stomped on the head of the painted-on mascot at midcourt. A fan threw a bottle at his head. The fan faces an assault charge and possible lifetime ban from Boston Garden.
I’m going to have to side with Irving on this one, but it’s also a little tone deaf to be amping things up by stomping on a beloved leprechaun’s head.
Fans in Utah harassed Memphis guard Ja Morant’s family. And a fan in Philadelphia threw popcorn at Washington’s Russell Westbrook.
“To be completely honest, this s--- is getting out of hand, especially for me,’’ Westbrook said. “The amount of disrespect, the amount of fans just doing whatever the f--- they want to do, it’s just out of pocket.
“There are certain things that cross the line. . .In these arenas, you got to start protecting the players.’’
He’s right. Sports teams and events had better start re-thinking their security plans before an athlete is seriously hurt. I guess they thought that we were going back to the way things were?
But it isn’t just the sports world. We’ve watched protests from all sides turn into violence. Even drivers on the roads have been way more aggressive.
I walk my dog three miles every day. If I do it, then she lies around sleeping all day long. If I don’t, she starts chewing on everything and running around crazy in the house.
Not that sports fans are animals, but, well, a lot of sports fans are animals.
I think we’ll see a whole summer of this, and probably into the fall, too. It’s not as easy, though, to get from the stands and onto a football field, and I’m not sure anyone has the nerve to spit on an angry 350-pound lineman who is trained to take people’s heads off.
I’ll say this calms down some by fall but never goes all the way back to the old normal.
No one wants to be messed with anymore. And there is a lot of steam to blow off. And a lot of crazies out there.