Embarrassing is one way to describe it. “Typically American” is another. Either way, it’s shameful and needs to stop for the good of the game.
We are in a busy time for sports. College, professional, and high school teams are on the fields. The world championships in track/field and wrestling have just finished. The Ryder Cup concluded on Sunday.
When I coached youth and high school runners, wrestlers, and field event athletes, I constantly reminded them not to reveal their emotions to their opponents. Yes, I wanted a winning athlete to be happy for a good performance, especially when defeating a close rival. However, I told them to never let an opponent know how glad they were if they won or lost.
Walk off with as dignified posture as possible and celebrate or cry later, away from the opponent. I also told them to cheer for their teammates but never ridicule an opponent by deed or word. “Every dog has its day,” was my mantra, letting them know that they would, like every athlete in the circle, lose sometimes.
Ryder Cup behavior (photo The Washington Post)
Reading about the Ryder Cup and the crowd’s behavior and shouts, some of which were obscene, yelled at the British players, I felt sickened. One article that mentioned the crowd’s conduct excused it as the typical New York basketball banter. Really? Is that an excuse? If so, shame!
There was so much ugliness that American player Justin Thomas tried to calm the crowd as it yelled shouts at Rory McIlroy, and Thomas even approached one especially vile-mouthed fan in an attempt to calm the ugliness.
While all that was going on in Farmingdale, Long Island, the Cavaliers of UVa’s football team defeated a top-ten-ranked team from Florida. The game took two overtimes, so at the conclusion, the home students, in a mob, rushed the field as if to prove Mark Twain’s observation that a mob is nothing but an army without a general.
According to news reports, 19 people were injured, and I saw one photograph showing what appeared to be a grown man taking a selfie as he shoved his middle right finger into the face of a Florida State player. What grace and courage!
Here is what one writer wrote about the ball game: “Also, and I know the Libs ain’t gonna love this, but how great is Charlottesville? I’ve been there a handful of times. I have family there. I’ve toured UVA’s campus. It’s such a great college town. They deserve a good football team. Hell, they at least deserve an exciting one.”
Indeed, the person is free to share such an opinion about a college football game, the town and college, and what it “deserves.” Perhaps his view is one that encourages the attitude that charging a field is a right earned by simply wanting UVa to win, or being a fan. Perhaps!
But read what he wrote carefully and cloak his words in the realm of responsibility, not rights. Since the writer mentions politics, I suggest he, and all of us, read Richard Haass’s The Bill of Obligations and examine what our obligations as spectators are as opposed to our so-called rights. Maybe the world has changed so much that spectators will no longer share in the excitement of a critical putt, or a crucial free throw, or the burst out of the blocks for sprinters, or the serve for an ace. If that is so, then the world, I offer, has lost something it needs in order to have a sense of right and wrong.
I write share in the above paragraph because, by remaining quiet, even reverent, in certain moments of a sporting event, a spectator can share the excitement and tension of making a long putt or running a fast time. We can’t experience what a world-class athlete feels in such situations, but if we remain quiet and allow the tension to grow, we can somewhat feel what the golfer, runner, or player is feeling at that exact moment. That is, in my view, one of the reasons we participate in athletics—the thrill of it.
But a loud, foul-mouthed spectator who shouts at certain moments or storms a field misses what I see as the good of such contests. That type of participation has no value, nor does it make any positive statement about a fan’s team and its success.
