Be A Fan - Not A Fanatic

It is bad when fans riot after losing a game Sure it is not a good feeling but there is no excuse for acting like a jackass. Probably the only thing worse is doing the same thing after your team actually wins. It is one thing to celebrate a victory but deciding that the best way to show your team pride is to go out an set a fire or flip a Taurus...That is Taurus not tourist. Although both would be pretty bad and get you in a lot of trouble!

After Monday nights New England- Buffalo football game there was plenty of blame to go around after a horrible decision to run back a late punt by Bills return man Leodis McKelvin. McKelvin ended up coughing up the ball and the Pats recovered and from there went on to go down and score the game winning Touchdown. The Bills all but had the game won and that unbelievable decision cost them the victory.

Sure that was bad and fans should be outraged. It was a brutal play, a bad decision and should not be tolerated by the coaches but that is where it needs to end...unfortunately it did not. McKelvin returned home at around 1 a.m. Tuesday and discovered a message that included the game's score next to an obscenity painted in white in front of his home in suburban Buffalo. McKelvin said he doesn't want anyone arrested and still considers Bills fans to be the greatest and that may be the case but it is sad that it is always the rotten apple that spoils the bunch.

"I'm hoping it was just a bunch of kids, who probably didn't realize how big of an issue this would be," said his teammate Kawika Mitchell. "If it was some adults, that just makes it even more scary." ...He couldn’t be more right, especially coming off of the Sean Taylor tragedy where he was shot and killed in his home by intruders following a botched burglary attempt in November 2007. It is incidents like this that provoke players to carry and/or own guns.

This type of incident has happened before up here in Canada as well, so don’t think it was strictly an American thing. In the 2004 CFL playoffs Paul McCallum missed a crucial 18 yard field goal in an overtime game against the BC Lions. The Roughriders went on to lose the game, and outraged fans vandalized McCallum's northwest Regina home with eggs, dumped manure on his neighbour's property, and uttered death threats to his family. The incident made national news, and the football club and Regina's mayor Pat Fiacco both denounced the vandalism as an "isolated incident" of "hooliganism".

On the comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Shaun Majumder (playing a Roughriders GM) apologized for calling McCallum "a bum who could be outkicked by a goat missing a leg".

Lots of us get very involved in sports and our favorite teams but there is a line that should never be crossed. At the end of the day one must remember that these are people with families and deserve a little respect.