I sadly have to agree with this. The games have gone from being going to watch your team play, into an all day event that usually features a lot of drinking by a bunch of people who likely are boors when they are sober, and turn into complete Delta Bravos when they are drunk. While I don’t tailgate (since it is generally my son and myself only), I have in the past and it was fun.
It is one thing to razz opponent fans, or to yell things at the players on the field when they foul up, but there is nothing good natured in what I have seen, sadly (kind of depends where i am sitting, too, when I have had the more premium seats it tends to be a bit better). I was at a Jets game several years ago against Cincinnati, and there was a woman there who was a bengals fan with some friends, and the stuff that was being yelled at her was disgusting, it wasn’t ribbing or anything like it, it was a crude and foul as you would find on the internet in unmoderated chat rooms, to say the least. I was with some friends who are pretty big guys, and as a group we finally told the bozos to shut up (not so politely).
The worst, though, my son and I wemt to a Christmas eve game between the Giants and Jets, sitting in the upper upper level. I have been in ugly places, but to be honest it was one of the ugliest things I have seen, I am no prude, it wasn’t just the language, I am talking everything up to and including physical violence (my son pointed out something ironic, the game was on Christmas eve, and we saw a guy all bloodied up being led away by State cops, wearing the jacket of a well known Catholic prep school in NJ…I guess the irony was lost on him, about getting into a fight on all nights of the birthday of the person he supposedly follows). Near where we were sitting, there was a guy with his daughter, she was about 18 or so…some lout near us started heckling her, in front of her father, suggesting that any girl who roots for the jets must be a (fill in your favorite term for a woman being paid for sex, the foulest one probably comes close to what the lout said), and the father reacted as you would expect. I told my son that if the father threw the guy off the roof of the stadium, I would testify on his behalf, I was that pissed off at the lout’s behavior (any dad would behave that way if it was their daughter).
I think there always was some of this kind of behavior, but it has shifted from being about going to a football game for many people and enjoying that to turning it into an excuse to get drunk and act out. While being a Jets fan I can understand the impulse to want to drink after the game is done to erase the memory of all the bad play, foul ups and other things associated with the team’s play, but I don’t understand the mentality, and it makes going to the stadium a lot less fun and it seems like stadium security has been cut back to save money or they have been told to only act if it is ‘really bad’ .
It is especially weird to allow this kind of thing, when the NFL is seriously worried if fans are going to go to the games live, while TV revenue and such make up a lot of their revenue stream, playing in front of an empty stadium , besides the lost revenue from tickets and even more so, concessions and parking (game day parking for non season ticket holders is 50 bucks!), it looks like crap and the players don’t like it…not to mention that thanks to black out rules, the game wouldn’t be shown on TV, and that would mean the tv stations would have to likely rebate ad money back.
Given that there is less and less reason to go to the stadium, when you have large screen tv’s with HD picture and surround sound and all kinds of camera angles in the comfort of your own home, and given the cost of tickets, parking and for food at the stadium, this would be just one more reason not to go to games, and that should scare them. I would hate to think of them banning tailgating or serving beer at the stadium (for me, I don’t quite understand drinking beer at a football game, especially when it is cold), but I also hate to think that the jerks will ruin going to games for people. It is nice that these days I see young women going to games (by themselves, as fans), it was something you didn’t see in the past that much, and I would hate to have them not go because of the jerks making them feel uncomfortable and I would hate to see parents afraid to bring kids, that is the next generation.
--then I could live with its continued existence. B-)