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Rooting And Looting: When Sports Fans Attack in America

In Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League on November 25, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Riot police get in position to control rowdy Boston fans.

Riot police get in position to control rowdy Boston fans.

Apparently, in the last decade or so, nothing says we just won a friggin’ championship like flipping a car over and setting it on fire. I write this in light of the “celebrations” in Philadelphia after the Phillies World Series win.

I’m not looking to point fingers or anything, this isn’t a moral treatise. It’s just curious why, in so many cities across the U.S., breaking store front windows, throwing glass bottles, and hanging from traffic light posts is now so commonly a cathartic response to winning a championship.

Recent Sports Riots

Let’s take a look at some recent sports riots in the last ten years. This selection is limited to professional sports, but sports riots are also common across university and college campuses in the U.S.

Possible Reasons for Sports Riots

Although the evidence is sparse, the occurrence of riots in some sports may be increasing in the short run but appears less severe when viewed against the historical record.

Environmental, social, and cognitive variables all being equal, what do these recent sports riots have in common?

It’s evident that many of the riots are started by drunken fans and maybe even trouble makers who are simply drunk, aren’t even sports fans and simply taking advantage of a reason to be disorderly in public.

That being in the case, why isn’t a city like New York not afflicted by sports rioting? I’m sure a bottle of alcohol or two can be found in the city. As far as I’m concerned, there are no documented cases of sports rioting in New York.

Can it simply be that New York is more accustomed to celebrating championships? Are local governmental officials and police better prepared to handle these situations before they grow out of hand? I’m not sure if it’s my imagination but it seems that with each successive championship in Boston, the rioting has been less severe.

Images of Championship Cities

It used to be that one’s sports heroes were on the front page of newspapers after winning it all.

Today, it’s usually a front page with sports coverage and a secondary story covering rioting fans, quoting the police chief with images of overturned cars and garbage bins on fire.

Unfortunately, this leaves the law-abiding fan, who so loyally rooted on their team on the outside looking in. It leaves a city that should be euphorically celebrating a championship instead with a black eye to the rest of the world.