Mob mentality

Fans - if you want to call them that - are going way to far.

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By GARY SHELTON, Times Sports Columnist

© St. Petersburg Times
published December 21, 2001

From the looks on the player's face, his team had suffered enough.

Keyshawn Johnson walked away from the field slowly, as a guy tends to do when he has spent much of his day with a bull's-eye on his jersey. There was pain on his face, twisted among frustration and exhaustion. He moved as if his body resented the motion.

Then it happened. An object flew past his head.

[AP photo] Refs at the Jaguar-Browns game run for cover as unhappy "fans" try to hit them with refuse after overturning a last-minute call.

It hit on the cold concrete and exploded. Whummpppph. It was a plastic bag, and from the sound, it contained something wet and heavy. Melting ice, maybe.

Johnson looked up into the stands, and assistant coach Tony Nathan nudged him toward the locker room. Johnson went on his way, but Nathan turned and glared into the stands, where the noise continued.

It happened Sunday in Chicago. This time, there was nothing much in the bag and nothing much to the incident.

Next time, who knows?

They are revolting, these fans. They are crazed and out of control. And their number is growing.

They are louder than they used to be, more profane, more demonstrative. More and more, they seem to believe they are entitled to more and more. They pay their money, and they believe they can say whatever, throw whatever, do whatever they wish.

At roughly the same time the fan was tossing something at Johnson, fans in Cleveland were going nutso. In the name of a sporting event, in protest of a wrong call, the customers threw bottles, trash, whatever they could grip in the direction of the officials. Jaguars wide receiver Jimmy Smith later said the players feared for their lives.

It was an ugly, frightening loss of control.

And it will happen again.

It will happen in Cleveland, or in Oakland, or in Chicago. It will happen in New York, or in Philadelphia, or in Foxboro.

Maybe, it will happen in Tampa Bay.

No one, nowhere, seems to want to tell the fans they are wrong. For one thing, the fans are the folks with the money. So you get administrators such as the Browns' Carmen Policy -- who initially defended the crowd -- who grin and look the other way.

"As a player, you can't worry about that," Bucs defensive tackle Warren Sapp said. "I like a raucous crowd. I've been joking about it. You can't hurt anyone throwing an empty plastic beer bottle, and they aren't going to throw a full one. If they do, I'll just stand at the 50-yard line and do jumping jacks. No one will reach me out there."

But does the price of a ticket grant a fan the right to say anything at all to a player? Anything?

Sapp shrugs. "I've heard it. "Cocaine baby' and "Where's the joint?' It's all in how you react to it. You can't let it bother you."

Still, there is something going on here, something wrong. There is a sense of license, an increasing mob mentality that smells of danger.

As long as there have been fans, there have been unruly ones. There is the guy who is too loud, and the guy who is too drunk, and the guy who thinks he was elected head fan. There is the guy with the foul mouth, and the guy with the vulgar T-shirt, and the guy on your left who wants to fight with the guy on your right.

You know these kinds of fans. You have sat behind them, or in front. You have listened to them rant, and you have watched them cross the line. As long as you have been going to games, you've seen people such as this.

But have you ever seen so many? Think of the trouble we have seen in recent seasons.

We have seen iceballs thrown in Giants Stadium, one of them knocking San Diego equipment manager Sid Brooks out cold. We have seen snowballs thrown in Cincinnati. We have seen a pair of binoculars whiz past Sam Wyche's head in Tampa Stadium. We have seen Jerry Glanville injure his knee while dodging thrown batteries.

And now this.

Where does it end? When fans storm the field, the way they have in South American soccer games? When someone brings a knife, as once happened in a tennis match in Germany?

Bucs safety John Lynch said Thursday that, when he played in college, it always was difficult to play at Washington because of the whiskey bottles and apples that tended to fly in your direction. Keyshawn talked of walking next to Rich Kotite as someone dumped a cold beer on Keyshawn's head.

So what happens now? Not much. A few speeches. A few more fans drinking their beer out of paper cups.

Eventually, however, another call will be blown. Things will be thrown. Eventually, someone will be hurt.

Maybe that's included in the price of a ticket, too.

Fans -- if you want to call them that -- are going way to far.

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