There is a fine line between being a passionate fan and just being a jerk. I’ve been seeing more and more people step right over that line in recent years.
I won’t say where this happened, but I was at a soccer playoff game a few years ago when a player’s father was ejected from the stadium for haranguing the officials. I don’t know which magic word he said, but the man kept jabbering as he was being escorted out. The sad part is that his daughter, one of the players, was standing on the sideline pleading with him to be quiet. She was visibly upset and embarrassed.
More recently, I was covering a basketball game when four fans from the visiting side were asked to leave. It’s hardly the first time this season I’ve seen fans get tossed; in fact, I’m sort of surprised when an entire game is played with zero fan ejections. And those ejections are nearly always because fans are berating officials.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with criticizing officials, but there’s a way to do so respectfully. I don’t know what would drive a full-grown adult to dog cuss someone who’s just trying to do their job, but I have a few guesses.
It’s usually men who I see getting the boot. Having been a male my entire life, I know all about misdirected anger. I’ve recognized it in myself and have spent a lot of years trying to channel it appropriately. But some guys would rather scream at strangers than go to therapy.
The fans who go overboard usually have a kid on the team. And listen, I understand wanting to see your kid succeed, but many parents are unable to just sit and watch a game with an objective mindset when their child is playing. Before each high school game in Mississippi, the public address announcer reads a script that warns against using abusive language and emphasizes respect for the game officials. A lot of folks seem to have tuned those parts out.
I spoke with an official who’s been on the job for more than 30 years, and he confirmed my suspicions that the fans are getting worse and worse. He believes school administrators could do more to prevent bad behavior on the front end, because they “know who the crazy parents are. They know that first before we do.” This official believes too much onus is put on the shoulders of himself and his colleagues when it comes to dealing with unruly fans.
The job is hard enough without all that nonsense. When fans become combative, tensions can escalate quickly, and a lot of officials have put obnoxious fans on a short leash. A surefire way to get ejected is using vulgar language.
“If you cuss me, you’re automatically gone,” the veteran official said. “Don’t nobody cuss me.”
Such abuse is a major reason there is a shortage of officials in Mississippi. And if you don’t have officials, you can’t play the games. Such a situation would be tragic, and the blame would lie squarely on those fans who can’t act like adults while watching a children’s game.
(Note: This is an issue that I feel warrants further examination, so I will be returning to the topic in the coming weeks.)
Brad Locke is a senior sports reporter for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
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