The USC game, football, and the dangerous anger of the fan

Like every Monday, it's turning into a busy morning.  I'm feeling very guilty to boot.  I have two students with the same first name who are both applying to multiple colleges; one is a former student now applying for grad school, the other a current one.  I wrote them both glowing letters of recommendation -- and of course, switched the last names.  They aren't applying for the same programs or the same schools...  I've got time to correct the error, but it's deeply embarrassing and I have been quite apologetic to the two students involved.   I write dozens of letters of recommendation every year, and I can't ever recall having done this before. 

It was a happy weekend.  My wife managed to "score" some tickets to two very nice seats for the UCLA-USC football game, so we spent Saturday afternoon with 92,000 other folks at the Coliseum.  I, holder of multiple degrees from the University of California system (including the Ph.D. from UCLA) went to the game decked out in Trojan red.  As I wrote last week, my heart belongs to Cal; I didn't feel as if I had much of a dog in this particular fight.  My wife, on the other hand, owns every available,purchasable piece of USC paraphernalia, and is absolutely rabid with passion for her alma mater.  (Each year that she was at 'SC, the Trojans lost to both Notre Dame and UCLA, so she's got extra reason to be happy these days.)  I had hoped for a more exciting game; as most folks know, the Trojans dominated from the start and won 66-19.  Given that the game was a bit of a dud, I spent as much time watching the action in the stands and enjoying the bands as I did following the struggle on the pitch.   (I also had one of my occasional "non-veggie" days.  I ate two burritos and two hot dogs by the start of the fourth quarter.)

What bothered me -- and always has at athletic events -- was the venom.   My wife and I were sitting surrounded by USC fans, and with one or two exceptions,  we were the youngest two folks in our section by a decade.  Most of the folks around us were old enough to be grandparents, but that didn't stop virtually everyone of them from hurling extraordinary profanities towards UCLA, its players, its band, its cheerleaders, and everything else associated with the Bruins.   A woman in her fifties, sitting behind me, shouted "Hurt him!" when a Trojan defender dropped the Bruin quarterback* for a sack.  "Break his fuckin' leg", her husband yelled.  They were drinking water and sodas; neither seemed intoxicated.   When the husband dropped his camera case on my shoulder, he apologized profusely.  He was perfectly polite to me while simultaenously rooting for a 21 year-old kid he'd never met to suffer a serious, painful injury. This couple wasn't alone -- everyone around us chanted "UCLA sucks" on more than one occasion. Three rows behind us,  that cry seemed to span three generations -- I saw a Dad, his father, and his son all joining in the joyous obscenities together.

I do not mean to suggest that USC fans are any worse than any others.  I've been to countless Cal games and sat with both students and alumni, and heard the exact same sort of thing.  During my years as a UCLA grad student, I went to a few Bruin games at the Rose Bowl -- and heard similar ugliness.  Something seems to give otherwise civilized people permission to say things they might not say publicly outside the confines of a sports stadium.   And I'll be the first to admit that in my younger years, I sat in the student section at Memorial Stadium and rooted not only for my Golden Bears to do well, but for my opponents to be humiliated -- and injured. 

The last time I yelled out something ugly at a football game was back in October, 1990.  I was at the Coliseum here in Los Angeles; my Cal Golden Bears were visiting the USC Trojans.  I was sitting in the visitor's section, but fairly close to the field.  As folks familiar with 'SC football know, they have as one of their mascots "Traveler", a white horse who carries a rider dressed in "authentic" Trojan guise.  After each touchdown the Trojans score, Traveler comes out and gallops up and down the sidelines.  (Back in 1990, the Coliseum still had a track around the perimeter of the field; it has since been removed. Traveler used to do a lap around the track .)  As Traveler came out after an 'SC score that day, he suddenly bucked and threw his rider right in front of the Cal section. 

In an instant several thousand Cal fans, myself included, rose to our feet and cheered madly.  Traveler headed off riderless, and was grabbed by a few brave security men before he went into the Cal bench area.  The rider stayed down; he bled heavily from his nose and was treated on the field.  Some of my fellow Golden Bear fans continued to hurl obscenities at the injured rider, but I began to feel deeply ashamed.  The man was not seriously hurt, but he still needed to be taken off the field on a stretcher.  As he was wheeled off, he raised his hand with the two-finger Trojan victory salute, which served to stir up my fellow Cal partisans even further.  But I felt awful.  You see, when Traveler threw him off, I had wanted that man to be hurt.  I wanted -- or thought I wanted -- to see his blood and his pain.  And then I did see it quite clearly, and was disgusted with myself. 

Cal and USC ended that game in a 31-31 tie.  (Golden Bear fans will remember that that game was the last tie game in our history.)  As I headed home unsatisfied, I remember an acute feeling of self-disgust.  I did not like my own longing for blood, my own exultation at another man's misfortune.  I made a pledge to myself: if I couldn't control my own mouth and my own rage, I wasn't going to let myself go to any more football games.  I actually took two years off as a result, not returning to a college game until Cal's next visit to the Coliseum in 1992.  But I haven't cheered for injuries or yelled that anybody "sucks" since that day some fifteen years ago. 

It's not always easy holding back my tongue.  Two months ago, my Bears lost a heartbreaker to UCLA at the Rose Bowl. I was bitterly disappointed and frustrated (we squandered a couple of double-digit leads).   On the way out of the stadium for our walk home, some UCLA fans jeered at us (my wife was loyally wearing Cal colors too).   With every fiber of my being, I wanted to yell "Fuck you, assholes!"  But I restricted, and just shook my head at them.  Not only did I feel an obligation to all of the other folks around me not to pollute the air with bile, I felt an obligation to myself not to get high on my own anger.  In my youth, I was intoxicated by the rush of self-righteous rage that seems almost omnipresent at major college football games.  I remember too well that I once enjoyed seeing my opponents lose more than I enjoyed seeing my own team win.  It felt good to lust for blood; it felt good to be enraged; it felt good to feel big and important and powerful.  (It was very similar to how I felt at street protests, as I've posted before.)

So today, I don't let myself go to that dark and enticing place of anger.   I love sports with all my heart.  I love watching sports, playing sports, reading about sports.  But today, I care less and less about who wins and who loses.  I care more and more about the way the game is played,and less and less about the result.  Of course I want my teams to win, but I will only root for them to win -- never for their opponents to suffer injury or humiliation.  It took me years and years (and a self-imposed ban on going to games) to figure out how to do that.  I'd like to think I've done it fairly well.

My wife and I long to have children.  Given that we are both athletically inclined and sports-mad, our children will no doubt be dragged to many a football game.  I worry about what they'll hear in the stands.  I worry about what emotions they'll feel inside. I wonder if, like their father, they will feel that "high" that can so quickly turn ugly.   I don't know what the future holds for them.  But I know this -- no matter what the game, no matter what the score, they will never hear a single word of rage from their parents.  They may hear exasperation and disappointment, but nothing more. (And hey, I'm a Cal fan -- I've had plenty of experience in recent years practicing being a gracious loser!)

One of the benefits of becoming an "older Dad" (as I surely will be) is that so much of that youthful rage is gone.  It went thanks to my own efforts and God's grace, frankly, more than mere biological maturation.  I heard plenty of venom from men twice my age this weekend; the idea that men automatically lose all their bile and toxic anger after a certain age is simply absurd.  Nature is not quite so kind -- this kind of transformation takes work and prayer.  Time alone doesn't do it.  Thus Lord willing, my sons and daughters will not have to grow up with a father who gets apoplectic with anger due to lost elections or rivalry games.  They will be, I think, the better for it.

*Drew Olson, the hapless UCLA quarterback on Saturday, is from the same small Bay Area community where my mother and most of my cousins were raised.  Countless family members from four generations went to Piedmont High (Go Highlanders!), and so I really ought to have been rooting for its most successful athletic alumnus.

Comments

[Caitriona]

Nice post, Hugo. You're right that too many people fail to learn the lessons you've learned.

[Camassia]

I hardly ever go to sporting events, but as it happens I've been to a baseball game in Minneapolis and another in L.A. in the last six months. I was struck by how much ruder the L.A. fans were. In Minneapolis a guy near me actually apologized for yelling so loud he made the old lady in front of him jump. Although it might also have had something to do with the fact that we had better seats in Dodger Stadium, and were probably surrounded by more rabid fans.

[Breadfish]

It's that kind of nonsense that keeps me from ever setting foot in the stadium here. Especially here in the South where the drinking starts at 8 a.m. in the grand old tradition of "tailgating", people just get way too nasty.

Only positive is, usually after gameday that poison seeps out pretty quickly. I guess it has to go somewhere, and better into screaming like a nitwit at a match than getting into fistfights with the neighbors.

[djw]

What if I don't root for anyone to get hurt, but rather humiliated? I don't want to see Derek Jeter injured, but I can think of few sights that would give me more joy than him losing a game by letting a slow roller between his legs or throwing a routine out 10 feet over the first baseman. I'll concede it doesn't say anything particularly flattering about me, but I've made my peace with it.

[Heather]

Okay - glad that you've brought up sports recently. I am someone who could go her whole life never having watched a sporting event of any kind and be perfectly happy and I am engaged to a man who loves sports. He watches the games, monitors the message boards and goes to as many live events as he can, and I resent it. I think it's time away from our family (I've got three kids and we plan to have a child) and from ME. I had a stepfather who's interest in sports superceded everything else. We couldn't make noise while a game was on. We couldn't ask him a question while a game was on. And a game was always on, and I've got some anxiety about my fiance and his interest in sports because of this. I don't want him to have to pencil me in at halftime in order to get his attention. I know I'm not the only woman who feels like this and I feel like it is a feminist issue in terms of how much undivided attention men think they need to give their partners in order to nurture a relationship. I suspect it's somewhat like housework - men will tend to think the toilet only needs to be cleaned every other month or so, while the women think it's atleast once a week. Of course, not to compare relationships to toilets. How do we close that gap? (I'm somewhat disappointed to hear that your wife is a sports fan since I can't use her in my defense! :)

[Ali]

I appreciate this blog. As a die-hard female USC student who goes to all the games, I find it quite ridiculous how there can be such a concentration of bloodlust in one area. Just the other day walking the path to the stadium to watch USC tackle UCLA, a UCLA fan slapped me in the face. I couldn't believe it! I couldn't just stand and take it, but there was no way I could physically fight back, I'm above that. So I just made a sarcastic quip about how manly he looked in his adorable powder blue t-shirt, and went on. Some people just take it too far.

[Hugo]

Yikes, Ali. I've seen similar things take place many places. I've been to many Division I college games in many places (admittedly, mostly on the West Coast) and can say that all things considered, fans are fans are fans. I've seen bad behavior -- and acts of kindness -- from Trojan and Bruin, Cardinal and Sun Devil, Duck and Wildcat, Cougar and Beaver and Husky and, yes, Golden Bear.

The only time I've ever reconsidered my belief that all fans behave in exactly the same way (generally poorly) was at the 2003 Insight Bowl, where my Bears played Virginia Tech. The Hokie fans were civil to a fault, and I was stunned by the lack of profanity and vulgarity. As someone whose family is filled with diehard UVA fans, that's tough to admit.

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