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.

Obama Switches High-Speed Rail to Fast Track

Posted by Thomas J. Billitteri
Staff writer, CQ Researcher
1/28/10

On the heels of his State of the Union address, in which he vowed to make jobs his No. 1 priority in 2010, President Obama said Thursday his administration will invest $8 billion in high-speed passenger-rail projects in California, the Southeast, Midwest, Northeast and Pacific Northwest. The White House expects the long-anticipated plan to create or save tens of thousands of jobs in coming years in everything from manufacturing and track laying to planning and engineering.

States have been vying over the money for months, and most of it will be used to improve service on existing rail corridors. But some of it is aimed at getting new fast-rail projects up and running — notably in California, where backers are seeking to build a $45 billion, 220 mph system, and in Florida along a Tampa-Orlando corridor.

Not surprisingly, rail enthusiasts hailed the announcement as far-sighted and sound. “These investments promise to bring Americans freedom to choose an attractive alternative to crowded highways and airports while making it easier for travelers to connect among trains, cars, planes and local transit,” the National Association of Railroad Passengers said.

But when I wrote about Obama’s plans for high-speed rail back in May, I ran into plenty of skeptics who said pouring money into a network of fast trains was an idea destined for derailment. Some argued that the geographic and demographic features of the United States make fast rail much costlier and less likely to succeed than in the compact countries of Europe, where zippy trains are a transportation staple. Others expressed doubts that Americans would park their cars and ride the rails in sufficient numbers to make the trains profitable. Some fear local politics will come into play, with cities and towns along rail corridors demanding to be included among the stops — thereby defeating the purpose of high-speed rail. And some argue that spending money on rail is frivolous at a time when federal deficits are zooming faster than a runaway locomotive.

But with unemployment at 10 percent — and much higher in some beaten-down industrial pockets —and many Americans demanding a more modern transportation system, Obama is hoping his rail initiative will be both an economic and political winner.

To learn more about the issues surrounding the administration’s plans for high-speed trains and the feasibility of transforming America’s passenger-rail network, see the CQ Researcher’s report, “High-Speed Trains,” May 1, 2009.

Marijuana journalism

The outlook in the media business isn't entirely bleak. Sure, newspapers alone laid off or offered buyouts to more than 30,000 people in 2008-2009 alone, reports one of several sites set up to track the decline.
But another trend may offer a professional lifeline to at least a few of them. The boom in marijuana decriminalization and medical marijuana laws is rippling into the publishing world, says the Denver Post:

The woman gracing Kush Colorado's centerfold is long-limbed and lovely, but the new magazine's real star is the marijuana plant she clutches to her breast.
Billed as the "premier cannabis lifestyle magazine," the slick glossy debuted in Colorado last month, one more sign of galloping growth in the state's medical-marijuana business.

...In the first four days it was available, shoppers snapped up 20,000 copies from stands at retail stores and dispensaries around the metro area, Kush publisher Michael Lerner said. Racks are reloaded twice a week
...Colorado is the magazine's first foray outside Los Angeles, but it won't be the last. Kush Michigan and clones in several other cities in California and Oregon are expected to roll off the presses shortly. Each magazine will feature content that is generated locally.
With medical-marijuana laws on the books in 13 states, New Jersey poised to become the 14th and bills that would permit the drug's use pending in others, [publisher Michael] Lerner expects the Kush brand to circulate in 34 cities by the end of the year.
Demand is so strong that potential advertisers in Michigan clamored for space before Lerner officially announced his magazine was coming to the state.

Reporting on Sex Scandals: It’s a Thankless Job But Somebody’s Got to Do It

by Dagny Leonard, Editorial Intern, CQ Researcher, Jan. 22, 2010

The ink was barely dry on our latest report on “Sex Scandals” when former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina finally fessed up to what had long been suspected. On Thursday, Jan. 21, Edwards, a former contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, admitted to fathering the child of his former campaign videographer and mistress, Rielle Hunter, thus confirming claims that the National Enquirer has been making since 2007. Barry Levine, the paper’s executive editor, told Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz that he thought the Enquirer should be in the running for a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the sensational story.

The supermarket tabloid is the perennial butt of journalistic jokes and not exactly your typical prize-winning publication. But the Enquirer’s coverage of the Edwards saga has proven to be accurate, and pace-setting, with the mainstream media holding their noses and following the Enquirer’s lead.

Kurtz quotes Enquirer editor Barry Levine saying of Edwards, “it’s great to see he’s taking responsibility for this child, Frances Quinn. She needs to know who her father is.” Quips Kurtz: “That's right: a supermarket tabloid editor is now lecturing a former vice-presidential nominee on matters of morality.”

Are such stories prize-winners? Certainly the persistent prying into the private life of a public figure shows tenacity, but it may not qualify as a “distinguished example” of journalism, which the Pulitzer Web site lists as a criterion for all categories of a Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

The Enquirer has also been keeping busy following beleaguered Tiger Woods – who was pictured on the cover of the new CQ Researcher report on “Sex Scandals.” The Enquirer has reported he entered a sex rehabilitation clinic, with photos showing a hoodie-wearing man who could be Woods walking outside a rehabilitation center in Hattiesburg, Miss.

With sex scandals seeming to run rampant in the past few years, the coverage of the Edwards and Woods scandals once again prompt some media critics and readers to question whether the media should be covering the private lives of public figures. As the pro-con debate in the Researcher report makes clear, there is wide and continuing disagreement.

Meanwhile, the down-market Enquirer is getting its props, even from The New York Times. The Times’ Jan. 21 article about Edwards’ admission is accompanied by a National Enquirer photo of him and his former mistress. The Times notes that Edwards “initially denied the veracity of a series of articles in the National Enquirer, calling them “tabloid trash.”

Both the Times and The Washington Post had teasers about the Edwards story on the front pages of their Jan. 22 issues, while other major papers such as the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune made no front page mention.

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

Haiti

Haiti occupies a place all its own in U.S. culture. The 1791-1803 uprising that marked the first successful slave revolution in history terrified American slaveowners. Over the centuries that followed, Haiti has represented sorcery (not in a good way), AIDS and pretty much every other social and physical illness associated with poverty and dictatorship - all in the spirit of blaming the Haitians.
Yet the overwhelming U.S. response to the catastrophic earthquake, from ordinary Americans as well as the Obama administration, seems to show a new attitude. Haitian-Americans are noticing.
"My spirit is totally uplifted by this," Yves Colon, a former Miami Herald reporter who now teaches at the University of Miami told the Washington Post. "Not too long ago 'Haitian' was a maligned word. Either you had AIDS or you were poor. It seems like people's eyes have been opened. The earth shook to open people's eyes."
Highly publicized remarks by the Rev. Pat Robertson and others might seem to point in another direction. But they were slapped down by a variety of other commentators for suggesting, among other things, that Haitians brought the disaster upon themselves. To be sure, Haitians themselves have been debating for decades how much responsibility they have for their country's enormous troubles, but these are discussions within the family, so to speak.
We last reported on Haiti, where I spent considerable time in the early 1990s, five years ago ("Haiti's Dilemma," Feb. 18, 2005). We expect to examine the country's reconstruction in the not-too-distant future.