Memo to unruly sports fans: Just shut up and watch
Chris “Mad Dog” Russo — the legendary New York sports talk radio host — needs to change his archaic, old-school rhetoric about the conduct of those who participate in sporting events.
Russo, who graduated from Rollins College and got his start in sports radio right here in Orlando, has rightfully been barbecued on social media over the last few days after chastising outspoken athletes with his tired, old take, “Shut up and play!”
I’ve got a better idea, Mad Dog.
How about castigating obnoxious sports fans and telling them to, “Shut up and watch!”
Is it just me or is fan behavior at all levels of sports — from Little League to Major League — becoming more nasty and hateful than it’s ever been?
Of course, we aren’t talking about the majority of fans who mostly go to sporting events to cheer their team and have a good time; we’re talking about entitled fans who show up and think the price of a ticket gives them the right to say or do whatever they want.
Like the New York Yankees fans who recently heckled an injured Cleveland Guardians player and then showered Guardians’ outfielders with bottles, cans and other debris. Or the two Dallas Mavericks fans who were ejected from the game earlier this week after putting their hands on family members of Phoenix point guard Chris Paul. Or the NBA fans in Boston and Memphis who heckled Kyrie Irving and Draymond Green to a point where both players responded by giving fans the extended middle finger.
Irving and Green were fined for the “obscene” gesture, but if you ask me they should be commended for their self-control. Honestly, I admire today’s pro athletes. I don’t know how
they keep from going Ron Artest and climbing up in the stands and slugging these boorish louts.
Speaking of Artest, most of us would have done the same thing he did all those years ago during the “Malice at the Palace” when a Pistons fan cursed him unmercifully and threw an entire beer on him. What would you do if somebody showed up at your job and treated you like that? Would you sit there and take it or go after the insufferable big mouth and punch him in the chest so hard his shoulders would touch?
On Inside The NBA earlier this week, the outspoken Charles Barkley said half-seriously (or maybe he was dead-serious) that he has a remedy for unruly fans.
“We can put an end to all this stuff,” Barkley said. “Some of these things these fans say, let’s take it right down to center court for five minutes. Let’s give me five minutes at center court with them; you ain’t gonna press no charges, nobody gonna be sued civilly, say what you just said to me right here for these five minutes, and I’m gonna beat your ass.”
Actually, Mike Tyson did just that a couple of weeks ago when he was on an airplane and a drunken, obnoxious fellow passenger kept badgering the former heavyweight champion and wouldn’t leave him alone. Finally, Tyson beat the bejabbers out of the guy like he was Frank Bruno.
Eerily, two years prior, Tyson foreshadowed the incident on a Facebook post in which he wrote: “Social media has made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
Does anybody really disagree with Tyson’s contention that the incivility, obnoxiousness and lack of filter on social media has turned some sports fans into in-stadium Twitter trolls who believe their “freedom of speech” gives then the right to spew any sort of vile, vicious, venomous filth without any consequence?
And it’s not just in pro sports and college sports; it’s in kids sports as well. Earlier this week, Adam Bates, a local organizer for youth sports officiating, was a radio guest on The Beat of Sports on FM 96.9 The Game. Bates told host Marc Daniels that there is a serious shortage of youth referees and umpires, in part, because of the growing number of obnoxious parents who verbally berate officials.
Pathetically, some parents even take videos of questionable calls that go against their kid, post them on social media and heap even more abuse on the officials.
“Some [officials] have chosen not to keep doing it because they’re frustrated,” said Bates, who organized a referee recruiting event earlier this week at Boone High School. “Who wants to get yelled at every day when they go to work? … Everybody has an opinion, everybody has a video camera, everybody is a keyboard pirate on social media.”
Isn’t it sad that some fans have obliterated the true meaning of sports and forgotten that going to a game is supposed to be a fun, joyful activity where we can all escape the anger and division going on in the rest of society?
When you attend a sporting event, you’re supposed to cheer, drink a beer, laugh and have a blast.
If you find yourself getting mad and wanting to cuss or say something to an athlete or an official that you would never, ever say to another human being standing right in front of you then remember our new edict:
Just shut up and watch.