Edit desk: Being a sports fan

Just over five years ago, Bryan Stow went to the opener for the San Francisco Giants to cheer on his favorite baseball team. Little did he know, it would be two years before he was able to go home again.

Austin Vitelli

Stow was attacked in the stadium’s parking lot by a pair of Los Angeles Dodgers fans and suffered severe damage to both his head and brain. He spent about seven months in the hospital before being released into rehab and didn’t return home until June 2013.

These kinds of brutal attacks are both ridiculous and uncalled for, including the world of sports and fandom. It’s a shame people like those two Dodgers fans make sports fans look bad as a whole, when in reality, being a fan is a rewarding experience.

Being a fan is so much more than just cheering for a team. It’s more than just wearing the team’s shirt or jersey to show people you care. And it’s way more than your team winning or losing games.

Trust me, as a fan of Philadelphia teams, I’ve been a fan of so many disappointing sports franchises that I’ve lost count. And while the city’s teams have produced few championships in my lifetime, rooting for them still one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life.

Being a fan teaches people how to be patient. The motto for both the Philadelphia Eagles and 76ers for the past few years has literally been “trust the process.” And whether or not I was naïve to buy into that line of thinking, I did because it’s what being a fan is.

You have to believe.

It’s about cheering on your team in whatever way you can, whether that’s at the actual game, on social media or in front of your TV.

However, as evidenced by Stow’s situation, not every interaction between fans is a positive one. A few months after that happened, two different fans were shot in the parking lot after a 49ers-Raiders NFL preseason game in San Francisco. At the same game, a third fan was beaten unconscious in a bathroom.

I recognize rivalries often cause an extra layer of excitement and “hatred” for the other team, but there’s just no room for physical violence in the world of sports fans. There’s bound to be some sort of physical conflict at some point at sporting events, so it’s impossible to completely eradicate it, but it should obviously be minimized.

Unfortunately, Philadelphia is not devoid of these incidents. In a playoff game between the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers at the Wells Fargo Center in 2014, a group of Flyers fans were videotaped beating a few Rangers fans senselessly, yelling obscenities and cheering.

This is not what fandom should be about.

Instead, fans need to learn to control themselves and keep their emotions under control. It’s one thing to innocently chant “Rangers suck” at a Flyers game, but it’s another thing to have hundreds of people chanting it at you as you’re being physically beaten for likely not much more than wearing the apparel of the opposing team.

And what’s even worse is when fans of the same team start fighting. While physical altercations of this kind are rarer, the most common form of conflict between fans of the same team occurs on social media.

Fans belittling fans of the same team as you just because they disagree is also not what fandom should be about. It should be about embracing the common bond you have and wanting your favorite team to be the best.

Being a fan can bring entire cities, states and countries together too. In the World Cup or the Olympics, everyone in your country has the same goal: to win it all. These experiences can unite people of different race, sex, religion or anything else and form a camaraderie unlike many others.

So next time you’re at a sporting event, don’t cheer on a fight in the stands. Be a real fan and focus on cheering for your team, because that’s what it should be about.

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Austin Vitelli, ’17, is the sports editor for The Brown and White. He can be reached at [email protected].