Who's Fault is it Anyway?

The Winter Olympics are finally here. Yes, two weeks of hockey, curling, figure skating, snowboarding, is upon us. Normally I look forward to the olympics. I like seeing sports I don't normally get to see and in some cases seeing athletes or teams come out of nowhere to become household names. Sadly, the Vancouver Olympics are not off to the best of starts.

Friday, not very long before the opening ceremonies, tragedy struck the games. Nodar Kumaritashvili, a 21-year-old Georgian luger, died in a training crash. That same day, an investigation by Olympic officials into the crash concluded that the track was not to blame. Really? Why did it allow Kumaritashvil to not only travel up to 90 mph, but also crash into an unpadded, yes UNPADDED pole? Not only that, but concerns about the track have been raised for sometime now. This week there have been more than a dozen crashes leading up to the games on the same course. One left a Romanian unconscious and on Thursday Australian luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg had this to say, "I think they are pushing it a little too much. To what extent are we just little lemmings that they just throw down a track and we're crash-test dummies?'' she said. "I mean, this is our lives."

What are the Olympics to do? Well, the show must go on I guess, even the luge where the men will now start at the same ramp as the women and at lower speeds. Talk about closing the barn door after the horses come home. Hopefully no one else will get hurt and we can enjoy the rest of the games, but given what has happened with the tragic crash and the inadequate reaction of the Olympic officials, that seems difficult.

What alarms me even more is that the excuses being made for the luge course sound like the same excuses that are made for cross country courses in equestrian events. You know the type of excuses I mean: they didn't train properly, it was a freak accident, etc. The bottom line is that there needs to be more oversight in regards to safety issues in all sports. We need to stop putting football players in after concussions, make changes to luge courses that cause upwards of a dozen crashes, and look more carefully at cross country courses that injure and sometimes kill horses and riders. It would be nice to see the powers that be take responsibility for once instead of blaming the victim, in this case Kumaritashvili. What needs to be asked is how many people are going to have to be hurt or get killed on this luge course before changes are made? I guess we can't make any changes because it would cost rather than bring in money, which sadly has become the bottom line and not the Olympic spirit.

Fans Behaving Badly

We continue tonight with our sadly ongoing series "Fans Behaving Badly." Last night during the second half of a men's college basketball game between Pittsburgh and West Virginia, fans starting throwing objects onto the court when Pittsburgh started to rally from a double-digit deficit. You know things are bad when a coach grabs the microphone in the midst of the insanity. Bob Huggins, the coach of West Virginia suggested that if someone sees another person engaging in this behavior they should, "point them out so we can throw them out of here." Bravo for being the voice of reason coach! Sadly, he doesn't go far enough.

Over the past several years there has been an escalation of bad fan behavior. It started with the "malice at the palace" in the Pacers-Pistons game in 2004. In that case it was not just fans, but players as well. That same year saw Frank Francisco of the Texas Rangers throw a chair into the crowd in a game against the Oakland A's which resulted in a woman getting a broken nose in the midst of a fan melee that started when then Texas Rangers pitcher Doug Brocail charged from the Rangers' bullpen to go after a fan, Craig Bueno, who, Rangers' players claimed heckled the Rangers pitcher about his stillborn child. Then in 2007 there was the revelation about the "Gate D" party at Giants Stadium where fans gathered at the spiral columns of the stadium and encouraged women passing by to lift their shirts and engaged in other lewd behavior. No surprise, some were drunk and some threw beer bottles. Notice a pattern here?

What is to be done? In my view there are a number of things we can do to deal with this. First, if fans start acting this way play the next game before an empty stadium. This is not a new, radical concept. They do it all the time in Europe when the soccer fans get out of control. In 2005 fans at a game in Italy started throwing flares onto the field, not just plastic bottles and other objects. If it happens again, make it two games with an empty stadium, and so on, until the message sticks. Additionally, surveillance cameras should be in all stadiums and fans caught engaging in unruly behavior should be banned for the season. If they offend again, they should be banned for life. Finally, and I know I'm going to be unpopular for saying this, alcohol should be banned at ALL, yes, ALL sporting events. Period. I know not everyone is a drunken buffoon, but sadly this is another case where a few idiots are ruining it for everyone else. In far too many of these cases of fan violence have coincided with drunkenness. Since there is no evidence fans can police themselves I say we go prohibition-style. I have nothing against casual drinkers. If you want a beer or two watch the game at home or go the local bar. Then maybe we can go back to enjoying sports instead of having to be in fear for our lives in the stands.