Football fans to fanatic?

Posted on Sat, Aug. 28, 2010 10:15 PM

Some football fans get a little too fanatical
BY KENT BABB | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

DAVID EULITT/The Kansas City Sta
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Benson, an Olathe resident, says that two years ago he took his young sons to a Chiefs exhibition game. It was bad enough that it rained, and then a handful of rowdy fans began displaying how much they’d had to drink. Benson says they were smoking and cursing, and he had to tell his sons, ages 7 and 11, that not all fans behave this way.

“It’s hard to explain,” says Benson, 48. “It was just terrible.”

He says he won’t be back — not unless he is assured that things have changed.

Arrowhead has been known for years as one of America’s liveliest venues to watch football. The sea of red, and all that passion with a fan base that lives and dies with every play. But at Arrowhead, the same as anywhere, the venue is only as enjoyable as the people who congregate inside it.

As sports fans get rowdier and ticket prices rise, those who pay their way in expect a total outlet. Chiefs Sundays are sacred, and one fan’s charms are another’s turnoffs.

“That Sunday is what you live for,” Benson says. “But you shouldn’t have to worry about who’s sitting around you and who might throw up on you. I can’t subject my kids to that.”

Thomas Joiner is a psychology professor at Florida State University, and he has studied sports fans’ behavior. He says that there has been a gradual “loosening of control” in many football stadiums, and as some fans get louder, drunker and more profane, there’s another group that just won’t subject themselves to something that’s supposed to be fun.

“There’s an element of cutting loose and blowing off steam,” Joiner says. “Those scenes are not for everybody.”

Joiner tells a story about a medieval tradition in a religious village. On occasion, the villagers would gather in a sacred location. The clerics, commoners and priests all drank themselves silly and acted like maniacs, because they believed it helped them deal with the rigors of life.

Joiner says that sounds a lot like today’s football stadiums, when people from various races, genders and socioeconomic backgrounds dress alike for one day a week and leave reality at home.

Joiner even says there’s a correlation between gathering at sporting events and a reduction in the suicide rates, because there’s relief in joining like-minded fans, even if the team is dreadful.

Jeff Mann lives in Kansas City, North, and says he can understand that feeling of belonging. He’s a 20-year Chiefs season-ticket holder, and he says his section has become something like a community. Like in a strong neighborhood, the regulars keep the riffraff at bay.

“There’s an element of fans there that are newer to the stadium,” he says, “who don’t know protocol, who don’t go to many games. You get that new fan out there who’s quicker to drop an F-bomb or get rowdy. Fans around them do a good job to say ‘knock it off.’ ”

Even so, Mann has seen Arrowhead when it shows its teeth. He’s used the stadium’s system of reporting misbehavior via an anonymous text-message line, which alerts authorities of bothersome fans and identifying their whereabouts. Mann says he witnessed a brawl in the parking lot last season, when one group of Chiefs fans fought with another after a loss to Oakland.

“Chief-on-Chief crime,” he says, and it’s amusing until he recounts the fight, in which one man suffered a broken bone in his face and another separated his shoulder.

Rich Lockhart is a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, and he says there’s a thick police presence dispatched each Sunday in the vicinity of Arrowhead. That’s in addition to off-duty police who work security inside.

“Whenever there’s more celebration,” Lockhart says, “there’s a better chance of misbehavior.”

Chiefs president Denny Thum says the team heard in recent years from concerned fans, and they were taken into account when Arrowhead was renovated. A family area was added to the northwest corner of the exterior, and the team will experiment this season with some lower-level seats that, Thum says, will be alcohol- and obscenity-free. He says there will be 25-40 of those seats in 2010, at no additional cost, and there’s potential for expansion.

That’s nice, but as usual when there’s discussion of change, not everyone is on board — not without some assurances that the old charms won’t be flushed away.

“I would hope the Chiefs never aspire to neuter, in effect, the fans,” Mann says. “I don’t think you want to take away that home-field advantage. There’s a way to go out there — raise hell, so to speak — and do it without (annoying) the family and spilling beer on the grandmother in front of you.”

Benson says he’s not yet ready to bring his children back to Arrowhead. Not only was his previous experience one he’d like to forget, but there are also the joys of high-definition TV to consider.

“I don’t want to be a prude about it,” he says, “and I don’t think I really am. We love the Chiefs. I’d just rather watch them from my living room.”

Posted on Sat, Aug. 28, 2010 10:15 PM


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