Sports can be a great stress reliever for an individual or an entire community to come together and bond over an hour and a half game once or twice a week. But can we just be honest for a second here and realize that sports, by definition, are just a game. Sure, a game with a billion dollar industry, but a game nevertheless.

However, this particular part of the definition seems to have eluded many parts of our nation. In various regions, a large amount of the public is willing to sacrifice their family, financial security, and their dignity in the midst of chasing some sort of perverted satisfaction they get whilst watching their team win. Is sitting in uncomfortable seats, watching a bunch of kids who you have never met run around for a couple minutes and eventually winning whatever trophy they were fighting for really worth a few hundred dollars? This is not for me to decide, but obviously the 80,000 that flock to Denver’s own Mile High Stadium almost every Sunday in the fall would say so. This is an opinion so widespread that we must come to at least accept as having some valor. We must accept this estranged definition of a game and move on with our lives. While spending this much on a game seems outlandish, it is something that I, as well as all of us, should be able to live with.

But the cost of attendance is hardly the greatest price that many sports fans pay on their voyage of watching their favorite team go head to head with an opponent. The most dangerous cost of sports is that fans think because they have taken the label fan, they have left the label human behind. That because they are now considered spectators, it is somehow okay for them to sit idly by spectating their fellow fans terrorizing players and other viewers in ways that simply are not acceptable in any other place in our society. This goes further than yelling insults like “the Patriots suck” or “Tom Brady can deflate these balls” (both of which were said at the Patriots-Broncos game I recently attended), there is nothing really concerning about comments like these, but the problem is the actions can become racist, homophobic and flat-out dehumanizing.

Colorado is not the only place in the country that has lost grasp of what is and isn’t acceptable during the competition of sports. Fans from Alabama, Chicago, New York, and pretty much any place with a serious interest in sports have lost themselves in the game to the point that in hindsight, we can see the fans went too far. However, there is a difference between making comments you probably shouldn’t have and completely crossing the line like the fans in Colorado did. The infamous rivalry between the University of Alabama and Auburn has been the king of completely abandoning any ounce of self-respect because of their “passion” for the game. After Alabama Kicker Cade Foster missed three field goals in the 2013 Iron Bowl, a game that had one of the most memorable endings in football history when Auburn returned a missed field goal 109 yards to win the game in the last seconds. Alabama fans were quick to point fingers. Twitter erupted, and Alabama fans, like only Alabama fans could, embarrassed themselves and their program by the comments they sent out for the whole world to see. Fans made public death threats on twitter to Alabama’s kicker Cade Foster with one fan telling the Twittersphere that “Alabama as a team played awful but Cade Foster if you don’t kill yourself I will”.
Last Saturday, Cincinnati fans adequately represented the great state of Ohio in the divisional round match up between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Cincinnati spectators did their city proud by cheering when opposing Quarterback Ben Roethlesberger was injured and proceeded to throw beer cans at him on the sidelines. Sports fans continue to neglect the idea of proper etiquette and seem to have no pride in the way their fan base is perceived
Comments and actions like these reveal the animalistic nature that still lingers in our culture, and goes to show that regardless of the progress we’ve made to be a more forgiving, accepting people, we still have a ways to go.