Two years ago I spent months engaged in a heated debate about why I love sports. “You should be doing something more important and worrying about the many problems facing the world today,” argued my friend. I responded by saying that sports are a way to escape the trials and disappointments of everyday life, a way to completely immerse oneself in an alternate reality. This summer, however, many have found sports far too real and have allowed their social escapism to leak out of the gates of the stadium into general society where their actions have become nothing more than social deviance.
In 1994, when the Vancouver Canucks lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final to the New York Rangers, Vancouverites took to the streets, rioting and causing an estimated $1.1 million in damages to the city’s beautiful downtown core. This year, with much of Canada behind them hoping for a Canadian team to bring home the Cup, Canucks fans and general hooligans embarrassed their city and country again by rioting after a Game 7 defeat. The riot—which caused $5 million in property damage—had Vancouver on the news alongside Cairo, Tripoli, and Damascus where citizens have been fighting for freedom from the iron grip of dictatorship. We torched police cars and broke windows after a hockey game. We should be ashamed.
Perhaps we should have expected violence from hockey fans as these are the same people (and I am no saint in this regard) who rise up to cheer when two players decide to drop the gloves and begin to mercilessly deliver blow after blow to each other’s faces with bare knuckles. I once attended a hockey game with a man from Brazil who was astounded that the winning fighter’s team got no extra goal or advantage but that the fight was just a sideshow. The cheers for fights may be muted this season, as the summer has seen the deaths of three of the NHL’s preeminent enforcers. Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak all threw their skulls on the line every night while fans cheered for blood and treated them like Roman gladiators. Regardless of whether their depression and other mental health issues were caused by fighting, or if the men fought because of these issues, we as fans need to ask ourselves: When do we turn off the TV?
Embarrassing violence is not confined to Canada and hockey alone. The end of the summer showed us that it is alive and well south of the border. One would think that Bay Area fans would have learned from the story of Brian Stow, the San Francisco Giants fan who was brutally beaten in the stands by Los Angeles baseball fans at the Dodgers’ home opener. Stow, beaten to the point where he needed to be placed in an induced coma due to brain swelling, did nothing but wear the wrong hat in the wrong place. This grisly act was replicated after an August NFL pre-season game at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park when a man wearing a shirt that allegedly said “Fuck the ‘Niners” was shot in the parking lot. The shooting followed an unconnected brawl in the stands where 49ers fans battled Oakland Raiders fans as surrounding fans cheered them on. When we have come to a point where attending games is dangerous and parents are afraid to bring their children, we must ask ourselves whether this is all truly worth it.
Concussions in hockey have left star players like Sidney Crosby and Marc Savard unable to skate, colleges have allowed football players at schools like Miami to be showered with benefits like strippers and prostitutes, and disagreements between billionaire owners and millionaire players over money has left us wondering whether there will be an NBA season this year.
But the summer was not a complete descent into sports-fueled anarchy. Last month, as riots raged and buildings burned across London and other English cities, fans of a second division soccer team, Millwall FC, banded together to defend London. Commonly known as “the most hated team in Britain,” Millwall supporters have a reputation for hooliganism and frequently sing “No one likes us, we don’t care.” Though Millwall fans are by no means poster children for orderly behaviour at sporting events, they were able to check their allegiances at the door when their city and society was under attack by other hooligans. Stateside, ten years after 9/11, baseball fans across the United States can remember how sport brought a nation together during its darkest hour. Let’s not continue down a road where a sporting event can be such a low point. Rather, let’s clean up the pastimes we love so dearly. The road will be tough, but if sports are to remain a haven from the chaos of everyday life, it is our duty to return to civility.
