Should the NFL do more to control crowd behavior at games?

To follow is an excerpt from the January 29, 2010 issue of CQ Researcher on "Professional Football" by Kenneth Jost.
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The Green Bay Packers boast some of the hardiest, loudest and most dedicated fans of any of the NFL's 32 teams. So when the longtime rival Minnesota Vikings came to Lambeau Field on Nov. 1 — led by former Packers quarterback Brett Favre — emotions ran high.

By the time the Vikings left Green Bay with a 38-26 victory, some 43 fans had been ejected from the 70,000-seat stadium; an additional 13 were arrested for disorderly conduct or marijuana or alcohol offenses. Leaguewide, teams average about three arrests and 25 ejections per game, according to Jeffrey Miller, the NFL's director of strategic security programs.

The rowdiness of some fans is one of the commonly heard complaints about NFL games. Families with children in particular often complain about fans' use of vulgar and obscene language within close earshot of youngsters. John Wallace, a Washington Redskins fan from Largo, Md., recently told a WJLA-TV reporter: “Spilling beer on me, people hollering, people pushing us — pushing my kids. It was terrible. I didn't want to go to no more games.” [Footnote 10]

As for the high crowd noise at NFL games, fans and teams themselves view the cacophony as part of the game. Broadcasters routinely refer to the crowd as the “12th man” at particularly noisy arenas. “The noise is intended to disrupt the [opposing team's] offense,” says Hans Steiniger, a super-fan who lives just outside Detroit and has visited all the NFL stadiums. [Footnote 11]

Steiniger says Buffalo Bills fans are rightly viewed as among the unruliest in the league. When he went to Charlotte, N.C., for a Bills-Carolina Panthers game, he saw Bills partisans “harassing” an elderly Panthers fan. “I was embarrassed to be a Bills fan,” Steiniger says. Fans in the Northeast and Midwest generally are more obstreperous than those in the South and West, he says, with one notable exception: the rowdy fans of the Oakland Raiders.

League officials are well aware of the complaints about disruptive crowds and claim progress over the past several years in policing fan behavior. “We know that in general the atmosphere has improved,” says NFL spokesman Aiello.

The league's initiatives include commissioner Goodell's issuance of a “Code of Fan Conduct” in August 2008, which prohibits, among other things, “unruly, disruptive, or illegal” behavior; “drunkenness” resulting in “irresponsible” behavior; and “foul or abusive language or obscene gestures.” The code also proscribes “verbal or physical” harassment of opposing teams' fans.

At the league's urging, individual teams are now using technology to facilitate enforcement of the rules by inviting fans to text complaints about unruly behavior from their seats to stadium security forces. “That's been working very well,” Aiello says. In Green Bay, Packers spokesman Aaron Popkey says texted complaints are “picking up.” Separately, the league is also trying to cut down on alcohol-related problems by calling on teams to limit to three-and-a-half hours the time available for pregame “tailgating” — the grilling and guzzling fests in stadium parking lots viewed by many fans as an essential warm-up for the game. Unlike complaint-texting, the recommended tailgating rule is not going down well with fans or teams.

By the end of the 2009 season, only the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers had set the league-recommended three-and-a-half-hour limit on tailgating. The Chiefs' limit was long-standing; the Bucs set their limit after the NFL guidelines came out. Fans in many places criticized the policy, saying cutting the time for tailgating would do little to control excessive drinking. “Tailgating is what makes the game unique,” Steiniger says. “As long as fans are responsible in how they consume and distribute alcohol, tailgating has a place in the NFL.” [Footnote 12]

Steiniger thinks stadium security officials need to be stricter in enforcing rules within arenas. “The way to change the culture of the stadium is to identify these idiots and eject them,” Steiniger says.

Longtime football observers MacCambridge and Oriard stress, however, that misbehavior at NFL games pales in comparison to the frequent chaos at soccer games around the world. “You're not going to get 80,000 people to come out for a football game and not use profanity,” MacCambridge says.

Oriard says the NFL could hurt itself by clamping down too hard. “The NFL wants families to enjoy games, but the NFL also wants wildly enthusiastic fans,” he says. “It wants cameras to be able to pan the crowd and find wild and crazy fans.”

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The Issues
* Should the National Football League do more to protect players?
* Should the NFL do more to control crowd behavior at games?
* Should the NFL do more to limit “showboating” by players?

For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Professional Football" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF.

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Footnotes
[10] “Texting Program Helps Redskins Calm Unruly Crowds,” Sept. 18, 2009.
[11] See www.nflfootballstadiums.com. The NFL's 32 teams play in 31 stadiums because the New York Giants and New York Jets shared the former Giants Stadium, which stood just across the river from New York City in the Meadowlands, N.J. The stadium was demolished at the end of the 2009 season; the Giants and Jets will begin sharing a new arena, Meadowlands Stadium, in the 2010 season.
[12] See Michael McCarthy, “NFL's crackdown on fans gets tough; Some fans — and teams — resist tailgating limits,” USA Today, Nov. 19, 2009, p. 1A.

What the Athletes Told Me

Re: Extreme Sports by Marcia Clemmitt

For my report on “Extreme Sports” (April 3) I spoke with four rockclimbers, three kayakers, two backcountry skiers, two mountain climbers, two snowboarders, two skateboarders, a world-champion freestyle skydiver, an Ironman triathlete, and a trainer for mixed martial arts (sometimes called “ultimate fighting”).

Surprisingly, I found that among athletes themselves, the title “extreme” and designation “thrillseeker” aren’t as well accepted as you’d think. Most told me that, while they’ve had plenty adrenaline-pumping moments, their real pleasure comes from mastering the rush and conquering risks with the skills and composure they’ve developed through years of training.

Frank Farley, the Temple University psychologist who coined the term “Type T personality” for “thrillseekers,” has hung out with motorcycle daredevil Robbie Knievel and a bevy of climbers who’ve conquered the world’s highest peak, Mt. Everest, and participated in hot-air balloon races in Russia and China. “While an adrenaline rush is part of it, you can have an adrenaline rush having sex in your own bedroom,” Farley told me. What “Type Ts” really “thrive on is challenges, and they often believe they can control their own fate,” he said.

Which brings us to the avid TV-watcher of Extreme Sports. Watching so-called extreme sports events like the X Games and the Ultimate Fighting Championship from our armchairs, lots of us enjoy vicarious thrills. That’s a boon for advertisers, who use images of backflipping snowboarders and kayakers navigating Class 5 rapids to sell products from soda and energy drinks to antihistamines. Extreme sports images and tv programming are especially good for capturing advertisers’ highly sought-after “young male” demographic, who are the most likely among us to harbor pent-up desires for adrenaline-pumping thrills, marketing experts say.

-- Marcia Clemmitt

To read the Overview of  the report on Extreme Sports, click here.

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Extreme Sports

Are they too dangerous?

By Marcia Clemmitt, April 3, 2009

The wild world of so-called extreme sports ranges from motorcyclists executing double back flips to kayakers navigating deadly Class 5 rapids to mixed martial arts (MMA) — also known as “ultimate fighting” — where combatants use kicks, punches and stress holds. But many “extreme” athletes reject the label, arguing that the term marginalizes their sports as the sole province of adrenaline and violence junkies, when they actually require high degrees of skill. Now legislatures in New York and other states are considering bans on MMA. Proponents say the matches, legal at the pro level in 37 states, are safer than boxing and emphasize fighters' broad-based martial-arts training. But opponents argue that allowing such a wide variety of aggressive moves in a single fight is barbaric. However, skateboarders and other extreme athletes cite statistics showing that traditional sports such as boxing and football cause injuries and deaths at a higher rate than any of the extreme sports.

The Issues:

* Should “ultimate fighting” be banned?
* Are extreme sports more dangerous than other sports?
* Have media portrayals boosted action sports?

To read the Overview of this week’s report, click here.

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Overview of the CQ Researcher Issue on "Extreme Sports"

By Marcia Clemmitt, April 3, 2009

Canadian teenager Dean Lewis’ biggest mistake may have been getting into the ring in Winnipeg with a more experienced fighter. Just 18, he had a lot to learn about the “extreme” sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), which allows combatants to use potentially deadly moves from kickboxing, jujitsu, sumo and other combat techniques. After a series of blows to his head and body, the young man collapsed in the ring with brain swelling and a severe concussion. As his lungs filled with blood, ringside doctors put a breathing tube down his throat; Lewis suffered several seizures on the way to the hospital.

It was “the bloodiest fight I have ever seen live,” said Keith Grienke, who blogs about MMA at cageplay.com. An “illegal upkick to the nose” was the blow that ultimately felled Lewis, Grienke said.

After recovering, Lewis said he wanted to start training again as soon as possible, but that isn’t going to happen. According to one of his trainers, Winnipeg MMA fighter Rodrigo Monduruca, Lewis “will never be able to fight again — ever.”

MMA is the most controversial of the many so-called extreme sports that have vaulted onto the national stage in recent decades.

While it is unquestionably the bloodiest, it is far from alone. Controversy also has dogged other extreme sports such as snowboarding, skateboarding, kayaking down waterfalls and BASE jumping — or parachuting from buildings, bridges and cliffs.

Extreme sports are generally defined as individual rather than team-oriented activities that athletes essentially invent by coloring outside the lines of the traditional sport world, often by attempting extreme feats or performing in unusual venues.

Critics argue that the sports are overly risky; that some, like skateboarding, damage property; and that many, like snowboarding, promote reckless, even thuggish, behavior. Moreover, they say spectators are attracted by the potential for severe injury and violence, and they scoff at the claim that the craving to watch “the bloodiest fight” is healthy But many athletes say their events are mislabeled as “extreme,” preferring the term “action sports” for pursuits that they say are more about skills than thrills.

“I . . . have a problem with it being a ‘sport’ just because someone defines it as a sport,” said Terri Mills, a planning commission member in West Valley City, Utah, where tighter MMA regulations are being considered out of concern that bouts may encourage brawls or other violence among spectators.

MMA’s skyrocketing popularity means that if states don’t regulate it, illegal — and potentially far more dangerous — bouts will proliferate, says Bernie Profato, executive director of the Ohio Athletic Commission, which regulates MMA in the state. The public is drawn to many sports, including NASCAR, because of a craving to witness risk and violence, and unregulated fights are the dangerous ones, says Profato. Before Ohio regulated MMA, unregulated fights occurred all over the state, but since 2005, when MMA became legalized and regulated in Ohio, the state hasn’t had a single unregulated event, he says. Regulated events require certified ring doctors, ban certain tactics and take other precautions.

Once considered a niche market, action sports are attracting growing interest from the biggest media names. The CBS television network raised eyebrows in 2008 when it announced plans to periodically broadcast MMA matches in prime time on Saturday nights. Also last year, NBC television expanded its action-sports broadcasts beyond competitions to include “lifestyle” coverage of top athletes, and ESPN launched a cluster of online sites to offer up-to-the-minute coverage of online sports from BMX to “freeskiing.”

The public’s rising interest in action sports comes from advertisers and TV sports channels that choose the most “extreme” images to sell products ranging from athletic shoes to soda.

They focus on “the adrenaline rush because that’s what sells to the couch potato,” says Dale Stuart, a clinical psychologist in Torrance, Calif., who is a seven-time world champion in freestyle skydiving, in which gymnastics tricks are performed during free fall.

“People are basically afraid of the unknown, and when they think about skydiving, for example, they think, ‘I’m going to be up there with no idea what to do,’ ” she says. They don’t realize that before jumping “divers spend a whole day with a coach,” learning what to do.

While risk is certainly an element in sports like skydiving, practitioners are “usually success-oriented people, aware of the risks and making conscious, thoughtful decisions about what they do,” Stuart says.

Action athletes generally do have “thrill-seeking” personalities, says Frank Farley, a professor of psychology at Philadelphia’s Temple University, who coined the term Type T to describe such people. But many Type Ts are the opposite of reckless, Farley says. “Those who live prepare” for their sports, he says. “They don’t want to die. They want the challenges, the creativity, the risky experiences. So they prepare.”

Type Ts do push the envelope, not just in sports but in science and the arts, Farley says. And while some Type Ts push it in negative ways, such as by taking drugs or committing crimes, many others are society’s creators and innovators. “If we didn’t have these people, we’d be back in the cave,” Farley says.

Snowboarding has furnished many an extreme image to marketers, but that’s far from the full picture, according to Holly Thorpe, a snowboarder and lecturer in sport and leisure studies at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. There are more than 18.5 million snowboarders worldwide, ranging in age from 5 to 75, making “the notion of snowboarding as extreme [seem] obtuse,” she wrote.

Nevertheless, “with more than 75 percent of American snowboarders under the age of 24 and males constituting approximately 70 percent of all boarders, it is no wonder that stereotypes continue to abound,” Thorpe acknowledged.

Action sports like freestyle motocross — in which motorcycle riders do jumps and acrobatics — and whitewater kayaking do pose dangers, participants acknowledge.

While preparation is vital to most action sports, the situation will always throw unforeseen risk into the mix, such as a slippery surface, says Farley. Motorcycle stunt riders like Robbie Knievel — son of the legendary Evil Knievel — “practice over and over again, but at the moment of takeoff it’s always risky,” he says. “Very competent people die all the time doing things like climbing Mt. Everest.”

Freestyle skiing — skiing off an icy ramp in order to perform airborne acrobats — was banned as a competitive sport in the 1960s and ’70s because athletes falling from a five-story height while twisting and turning risked serious injury. But “this did not deter . . . athletes from training and competing unofficially” or prevent media coverage, said Kenneth P. Burres, a back surgeon in Montclair, Calif. Today, it’s an Olympic event, and standardized venues and equipment have reduced the injury rate, though high risk remains, he wrote.

“The fact that they’re called ‘extreme’ sports means, if you make a mistake, you die,” says Ron Watters, an adjunct professor of outdoor education at Idaho State University. In extreme climbing, for example, “the edge that you walk between life and death is a knife edge,” he says. Casual spectators can be tempted into danger if they fail to realize the people that make these highly entertaining DVDs of high-risk activities “did not just start doing the sport yesterday. They started out with teachers,” he says.

While media images of many action sports depict rugged individualism, teamwork is actually the order of the day and helps make sports safer, says Jay Young, a West Virginia-based writer and rock climber who runs the Web site rockclimbing.com. “It’s very common for a person to fall off a rock but very uncommon for them to hit the ground” because most people climb in groups, literally tied together, he says.

Progressing from marathon running to the even more extreme Ironman triathlon — a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile marathon — “I actually find myself healthier,” says Taneen L. Carvell, president of a Washington, D.C., marketing firm, who completed her first Ironman nine days after turning 40. The multiple skills required of an Ironman athlete demand that “you know your body” and cross-train in a more balanced way than runners often do, she says. “You’re out there for 12 or 13 hours, not three,” as in a marathon, so you must be thoroughly healthy, she says.

“One of the nice things” about action sports like skateboarding “is that each kid can express himself at his own level,” without needing top skills just to stay in the game as a teenager, as is the case with many traditional sports like baseball, says John R. Ricciardi, Jr., president and founder of the New Jersey-based Action Sports Association, a nonprofit that aims to expand corporate, government and parental support for action sports. Most action sports “are healthy lifestyle habits” that one can pursue for decades, he says. Furthermore, “a lot of kids have problems at home, and these sports can be their salvation; my kids used the skateboard to work through their problems,” like their parents’ divorce, says Ricciardi.

Skateboarding “does cause minor property damage,” but that’s far from its essence, says Ocean Howell, a former professional skateboarder who is a writer and a graduate student in architectural history at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you see a kid going down the street, you may think he’s a thuggy jerk, but if he’s jumping on and off the curbs on a skateboard, making it look smooth, then that kid has a tremendous work ethic,” Howell says. “That kid is practicing an art form, and has an interest in doing something right.”

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