The phone rings. It?s a Minneapolis area code. Who could this be?
Turns out it?s Eli.
Eli is a college girl, smart and attending graduate school next fall, so the first words out of her mouth catch me a little by surprise.
“Hey Lee, we are rioting right now! The Gophers won the National Championship!”
Oh yeah, what fun that must be.
At this point in the conversation I?m a little surprised, because while Eli is usually a calm and very thoughtful individual, albeit a little strange, she has now been transformed into part of a group of unruly street thugs ready to smash windows and break things, and for what? Because her team won a game? She likes sports, but not that much, and for God?s sake, the Gophers finally won their championship; shouldn?t the Minnesota fans have been more inclined to break things if they had lost?
The events that unfolded that night led to at least 25 arrests, as police broke up the crowd of more than 600 by using what many Minnesota students described as abusive force. By the end of the night, I?m sure it was one of those situations that was hard to believe had started out as a sporting event for those that ended up being involved.
Yet I shouldn?t just pick on our oft-misled friends to the north; they were merely following the example set for them by those great and classy fans of the Maryland Terrapins.
Despite winning the NCAA Championship and an increased police presence, the Maryland crowd turned riotous after the win, breaking the window of a bicycle shop, throwing bottles and other objects at police and lighting bonfires. But on the bright side, the damages weren?t expected to be nearly as great as the $500,000 caused after the previous year?s loss to Duke.
People get hurt; property gets damaged–over a sporting event.
That?s pretty sad.
Sports are great, and I do think that they are important. I take them pretty seriously, but it is too bad that the so-called future leaders of society should have to break windows and jump on top of fires while good and drunk to capture the moment of victory.
Where did all this sports rioting come from? Perhaps we?re just becoming more European. According to the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, the game of football (meaning soccer) has been associated with violence since its beginnings in 13th-century England. Hooliganism, as it is known today, began in Britain in the 1960s and spread to other areas of the world by the 1970s.
While America has not yet demonstrated the full-scale capacity for sporting-event violence that parts of Europe and South America champion, it doesn?t mean that our post-championship rioting is any better.
The closest thing to sports rioting I have seen on this campus was when the Badgers advanced to the Final Four in 2000.
Students poured out of their dormitories and ran heedlessly for State Street. Miraculously, they avoided all the cars on West Johnson and University. Students climbed trees, body surfed and had a good time. When the fun was over an hour later, students had not been pepper-sprayed, windows were intact, and no smoke rose into the air.
The question is, what would have happened if UW had won the championship that year?
For a while, I assumed that the run that year was a fluke and that Madison would never see the day that the Badgers would win a title. Yet after just one season under Bo Ryan and a piece of the Big Ten championship, somehow I think that one day I might live to see Wisconsin wins its own crown.
Granted, I might be too old to charge down to State Street as I did as a freshman, but I?m sure the kids will. I hope they can save Madison the embarrassment of rioting students.
