I went to my first professional football game on Sunday. I've been to sporting events before, baseball and hockey specifically, and a few minor league baseball games too.
We'll put the minor league game aside, because that's a different category in terms of who are the targeted ticket holders, and how much money the enterprise is trying to make.
A football game is a spectacle from start to finish. Likely owing to the fact that there are a grand total of 8 homes games a year, maybe two more if the team is really, really good. (another argument against municipalities ponying up that much public money to fund buildings for for profit enterprises that sit empty a good part of the year, though some are used for local non professional sports). It probably has a lot to do with all the unnatural breaks in the game that are for TV timeouts, also known as commercial time.
I think I know the real reason. The last thing you want is a building packed with anywhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people, three quarters of whom are three sheets to the wind before they step through the door, bored. Even for a minute.
So from the moment you sit in your seat, until the last fan has staggered from the peanut shell, plastic cup, bottle, chili dog holder strewn stadium there isn't a quiet moment.
For years I've been a fan of Phil Mushnick, who highlights the problems with televised sports. An old crank, some say. One of his pet peeves is when the TV cameras seek out the fans acting the most boorish to be highlighted during those times on TV when time must be filled (or when stupid networks think that people who are watching a game on TV are interested in being taken away from the field of play to see these obnoxious fans). His point is often that obnoxious drunken behavior is being rewarded. It's true. As soon as the people next to us saw the camera guy they started screaming and shouting and just being annoying.
Keep in mind, we had great seats. Front row, 50 yard line behind the home team bench. You'd think tickets like that would somewhat protect you from the truly drunk fans. You'd be wrong. I had the pleasure of spending the first twelve minutes of the game with two empty seats between me and the woman in the next seat. She moved over after a few minutes and we were talking between plays (obviously, this wasn't NY). After a little while, the rightful seat owners arrived, each carrying a large plastic cup (20-24 oz at least) of beer. They were young. Early to mid twenties, and friendly. As the game wore on she became a lot friendlier to me, and spent most of the second half (after two more bottles of beer and another large cup)facing away from the field, alternately sitting on the railing to the field, and half on my lap. I was kind of hoping she'd fall over the railing, but that didn't happen. She was a nice person, but I just didn't have the patience to deal with her giggling questions about why the police men don't hem their pants, since it would look so much nicer. Her boyfriend was not next to me, but we were all treated to his predictions of touchdowns, often by players who were not actually on the field right then.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time. It was fun to experience it, especially with MBB, and especially because the Vikings won. But the drinking is out of control. When we showed up at the stadium a 11:20 in the morning (the game started at noon), there were crowds of people standing around drinking. According to the website, no beer is sold starting at the start of the third quarter, but my seatmates got more beer in the late third quarter and I saw people with fresh cups in the fourth.
Granted it did not seem that anything to horrific happened, but that was not the case in 1999 when a man driving home from a NY Giants football game paralyzed a two year old girl when his car smashed into the one she was riding in. He had been drinking before the game, and at the game he gave the concession guy a $10 bribe to sell him six cups of beer at one time. The limit is two. 5-5, 150-pound man, he had had about 16 beers that day, and his blood-alcohol level was .266, nearly three times the legal limit. He was so incoherent at the time of the accident he could not stand up straight, or recite the alphabet, the police report states.
He went to jail for five years, and the family sued the Medowlands, the Giants and Aramark, the concession company. They won a $135 million judgment against Aramark. The others settled with the family. The judgment was overturned in 2007, the three judge panel did not feel "the culture of intoxication" evidence that the girl's lawyer presented should have been admitted.
In 2008 Aramark settled for $26 million. I think that if you asked most fans if there was a "culture of intoxication" at football games, I think thy would say yes. I know I only went to one game, and I don't know why it's worse at these games (versus Hockey or baseball), but it may go back to the few times a year thing. In this age of computers, and the price of beer at a stadium marked up as high as it is, I can't see why a fan can't be given a card when he walks into the stadium, or when he buys his tickets. One card, if you lose it too bad. You get to swipe it twice, after that you're cut off. If another fan gives him his card, so be it, but generally it would keep a control on alcohol consumed.
The game was fun to be at, it was an amazing weekend, I just can't believe that this goes on on a regular basis in 16 cities every week.
3 comments:
this shows you how many crazy people there are in these cities alone. say there are 50,000 people at each game? multiply that by sixteen and you get about 800,000 beer crazy fans.that's assuming the same people keep going to the games, and if they don't, that's at least another 2,000 who just say home and drink all the beer they want with constant refills and bathroom breaks between plays.
No one wants to control the consumption of alcohol. It's too profitable. Rightly so, and as long as these unpleasant drunks don't drive their cars at the time of impairment, I for one couldn't care less if the whole nation is rolling around drunk.
Why do you think this is limited to just sporting events? In some subsets of some cultures, it is unfortunately a weekly thing year round.
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