Sports. Really?

And so yet again we have another example of sports fans* behaving badly. In today's story, some drunken supporters of the Kansas City Chiefs football team beat hell out of a guy wearing a New York Jets football jersey, after he (a firefighter and son of a FDNY firefighter) expressed concern when they yelled at him that New Yorkers got what they deserved on 9/11.

The lifelong Jet fan suffered a fractured jaw, cheekbone and eye socket, and also has bleeding on the brain.

I like to watch a good game of professional football or baseball or basketball, on occasion. I just don't kid myself that the team matters much, beyond college, or even high school. Players are swapped around like interchangeable pieces, and the guy who played hard for your team may play harder for the avowed team nemesis, next year. Most players at the professional level don't play for the town that they grew up in, except by accident. When it happens, it's a noteworthy rarity.  Heck, even the move from city to city, on occasion. So it is that the fan is usually rooting for a uniform. Like the Dallas Cowboys? You're rooting for silver and blue and white laundry.

So  never have really gotten the whole sports rabidity thing. It is my understanding from Cowboys fans that one is risking injury to wear a Dallas Cowboys-branded piece of apparel into a Philadelphia Eagles home game. What the hell?!? Israel and Jordan can play each other at the Olympics with less strife.

I've pointed out my dismay over such things in the past, and I understand that most sports fans aren't like this. But ask yourself, sports fan: why does this matter so much to you?

But we excuse such behavior on and off the field of play by the players, and permit them to keep their multi-million dollar jobs, so I guess that it's expected, by some Associative Property, that followers would do so, too. Most of us would be fired from our jobs for intentionally assaulting another co-worker.

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*"Fan" being short for "fanatic."