Pitarresi: No reason for bad fan behavior

There was an altercation between Syracuse University fans and a much smaller group of Georgetown fans in the student section at the Orange-Hoya game Saturday.

 

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, probably because it happened in the upper deck of the student section behind press row. It has become an issue in the Syracuse media, with some SU fans defending the throwing of water bottles and beer in the name of school spirit, revenge or whatever, and the claim that the Georgetown fans started it. Some didn’t regard it as no big deal, something that is just part of college sports.

 

I don’t see it that way at all. There are a multitude of reasons why physical and verbal altercations are a bad thing, but I guess youth – although not every boorish fan is a student, for sure – and alcohol tend to fog people’s understanding of such things.

 

I’m not interested in arguing about this being normal behavior, or about who started it, or “we’d get the same treatment there” or how it is just a show of support of “our” team or whatever other excuse you can come up with. I think it’s all horse manure. I’ll just give you the old “Stop playing with that stick; don’t you know you could put someone’s eye out?” argument. I’ve have seen people suffer broken bones and get trampled when fans charged the court after a big win – “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry everyone!” as John Cleese’s character in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” said after mistakenly dispatching half the guests at a wedding reception – and no one seemed to care. However, if your mom or your little girl is close to that melee and people start flying around, how are you going to feel about it? Somebody is going to get hurt, and then everyone is going to be sorry, and it’s going to be because a few people got upset about a basketball game.

 

You write this stuff and college kids and some others figure you’re an old fogy. Maybe so.