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When Wildcats Attack
On Saturday night, I was going through the Periscope app, finding unique and interesting live feeds to watch from around the world. When I opened one feed that piqued my interest, I was instantly watching a mob of angry people burning things in the street. A group of police in riot gear swooped in to remove two people setting fires, probably for their own safety, as they were obviously drunk and too close to the flames.
Ferguson? No. Oakland? Guess again. The entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge? Sorry, you’re out of guesses. The location was Lexington, Kentucky, and the assembled students were furious that their basketball team had just lost to Wisconsin in the Final Four, ending their championship run as well as their shot at a perfect season.
I woke up and looked online for stories about the riot, and apparently, this awful and dangerous behavior is not new for Kentucky fans. According to The New York Post:
Everyone knows Kentucky fans take their basketball very seriously, but after their Wildcats had their perfect season ruined by Wisconsin in a 71-64 loss in the national semifinals in Indianapolis, they took their angst to the streets.
Much like they did after last season’s loss to Connecticut in the national title game, Kentucky fans rioted on State Street in Lexington, Ky., by burning couches and flipping cars in the streets.
YouTube video shows more of the fires that I saw on Periscope
An ugly scene that all participants should be ashamed of, but this looks de rigueur for Wildcats fans after big losses. This is not unique to Kentucky. Sports fans all over the United States and Canada, both happy and angry about outcomes of games, have rioted, burned things, and even shot at each other. This is a very ugly facet of fandom that has only grown over the last few years.
But something else really bothered me. At numerous times on the Periscope feed, I would hear a loud chant. “F*** the police! F*** the police!” Why? Because they were trying to keep the peace? Because they were trying to protect their fellow rioters? Because they were trying to protect themselves and go home at the end of the day?
Respect for police has dwindled in recent years and ever since the events in Ferguson it seems to have fallen to new lows. The students I saw chanting against the police looked like middle-class kids, with no obvious reason to have issues with the police. But they hear anti-cop sentiments from their classmates and from their professors. I guarantee that more people on college campuses know the name of cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal than the names of the chiefs of their campus police departments.
And the disrespect goes even higher, from local and state representatives, to members of Congress, to the Attorney General, and even to President Obama himself. We saw early indications of his anti-police mentality when he said cops “acted stupidly” in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. At almost every opportunity, when members of the Obama Administration have the chance to defend or condemn police, they choose the latter.
Police are not perfect, by far. We saw this just last week when a NYPD officer was caught on video berating an Uber driver. There are “dirty cops” everywhere that give black eyes to their departments and to their profession as a whole. Thankfully, however, bad cops are a very small minority. The vast majority of police officers are good men and women who risk their lives everyday and don’t get nearly enough credit for their service to their communities.
Give them that credit. Next time, you see a police officer, thank him or her.
P.S. – The other night, I was stopped and ticketed for a traffic violation that I was completely guilty of. I thanked the officer, and wished him a good night, and he did the same. Never once did I think “F*** the police.” Everyone is better served when they take responsibility for their actions instead of blaming others for their failings or perceived grievances.
Published in General
What is wrong with these people? What kind of person starts rioting over the outcome of a basketball game?
I’m shocked by this, and shocked to hear this is a trend. I didn’t know.
I wish I knew, Claire, I love sports, but people have taken it too far. Cameron
I am tempted to say that human nature is such that people will look for any excuse to give leave to their baser instincts if they can do so anonymously as part of a mob.
The problem with that is that calling it “human nature” lets people off the hook for their own bad moral choices.
Doesn’t just apply to sports.
Posted by someone with a degree from the University of Kentucky. (Vastly more disappointed by these fans than the game.)
When whites take to the streets to burn things, shoot at each other, and yell “F*** the police” it’s rioting.
When blacks take to the streets to burn things, shoot at each other, and yell “F*** the police” it’s protesting.
Got it.
Probably had their tuition checks riding on the outcome.
After a six-pack all you need is the excuse. The only thing UK’s loss did was accelerate the riots by two days. They were coming Monday night either way.
When I was a freshman at Duke back in the dark ages, we were ranked 6th in the country entering the ACC tournament and lost in the first round to NC State by a score of 12 to 10. The announcers said it was the most exciting thing since the invention of artificial insemination. We were so outraged that I think someone actually turned over a trash can on the quad.
I think these types of sports riots have been going on for decades, even when respect for police in this country was higher.
Also, Western Europe, especially Britain with their soccer hooligans, make us look tame by comparison.
I’m not justifying anything, what I am saying is that it’s a different kind of anger which doesn’t last as long. After one night, they go home and sleep it off. It doesn’t seem as dangerous from a mob mentality standpoint as a Furguson or Watts does. Nor are those students (?) out to hurt anyone really, just vandalize.
I would sanction Kentucky, however, and not allow their basketball team to play at all next year.
The University should kick out any student that was arrested that night for violence or intoxication, likewise the NCAA should ban the team from next years tournament. Zero tolerance. If your school’s students/fans can’t demonstrate good sportsmanship your school doesn’t deserve the right to participate.
I tend to stay out of the cities, (Lexington, Louisville) when a big U of L game or U of K game or worse when U of L plays U of K. It is just safer that way.
It seems that the favorite pastime after a big game is to burn couches and pop car tops. Not sure what either activity has to do with basketball but it seems to have become a tradition.
They would most likely burn the city down in such a case.
Yeah. What do these people think this is football (AKA soccer).
It’s been going on for years, win or lose. It needs to STOP.
Several years ago I was on the phone with a data recovery/detective agency about getting data recovered from a crashed disk of one of our people. (I worked for an off-campus department of a Big Ten university.) To explain where his business was located the guy said, “It’s across the street from where they have the riots.”
No alibis,
Lord of the flies,
Hit em right between the eyes,
Hit em right between the eyes.
Whatever. It’s not going to. It needs to be punished.
Doubtful. They might riot again, but it would be quelled long before the whole city got burned down. Remember, unlike ghetto riots, these students have a future to lose. And they do know it. As for non-students that join in, are they really that passionate over a college basketball team? Very doubtful, not to the extent of burning the city down.
And anyway, regardless the intensity of the riot, you add another year of no playing basketball for Kentucky.
This goes beyond disrespect for the law. Kentucky fans… and I’m related to many… often have a snotty sense of entitlement about these things. You should have seen the Twitter feeds and facebook posts about the game. Why, it was a conspiracy! The refs threw it for Wisconsin because *insert theory here*. No way did Kentucky commit all those fouls! They took OUR title away from us!
Add the college glorification of thug culture in that mix, and you get cars turned over and houses on fire. To Millenials especially, it’s a short distace from “That was a foul ???, to “f*** tha police!”
It’s become so commonplace, many think it unusual that San Antonio Spurs fans have never rioted after any of their team’s five championships.
I can certainly identify with feeling crushed by a loss in sports. No doubt many of us can. For me it might inspire the urge to crawl into a dark hole somewhere, but never the desire to hurt someone or destroy property. Sports are great because they give us real competition; why ruin it all by taking your disappointment out on people who clearly haven’t wronged you? For those who require feel-good endings in all their entertainment, I can supply a nice, long list of bad movies to keep them occupied for life.
I just happened to be in Lexington this weekend for a different telecast. The local reaction was… Interesting.
My favorite came this morning at breakfast, listening to a little old lady complain about the coverage on SportsCenter.
Read with Southern accent: “Why are they doin’ that? Why is he holdin’ up the paper? Our boys feel bad enough right now without them rubbin’ it in!”
I’m sure she would have felt just as concerned for those Wisconsin boys and the cruelty of the 24-hour news cycle had the game gone the other way.
Some people just like to get their angry mob on. I favor an armed response. An anarchic mob is no less a threat simply because they are college aged, or upset about sports. They may as well be calling for the head of an author.
Just as a weak America causes international chaos, the idea of uniformed, armed officers of the peace *who will not do anything* is just an incitement to violence.
So shoot them. “What, for flipping a few cars? That’s monstrous!” No, for forming a literally riotous mob and sacking a city.
I ran across some of the economic literature on rioting in the last couple of weeks. Here is a paper from 1996 that predicts that San Antonio is unlikely to have riots, based on 1990 data, long with Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Seattle. Oddly enough, Milwaukee and Indianapolis were listed among the most likely to riot US cities.
Most of the paper’s conclusions aren’t surprising, rioting goes down when the probability of being caught and punished go up. But one interesting conclusion is that the size of government is positively correlated with rioting. The authors say that maybe this is because the gains from rioting are higher when there are more government expenditures to divide.
Muleskinner, TEXANS are more likely armed than most others.
And when Texas Tech fans do riot, it is seems to be at the arena…
But feel free to respond with your favorite Aggie joke.
Do they still have bumper stickers that say “An armed society is a polite society”?
We have bumper stickers that say,”Honk If I’m An Aggie.”
I did my first degree at UK in the very early 2000’s, and this stuff never happened when I was there. A few years after I left I remember hearing about a couch being burned, and evidently it is continuing to escalate. The university president (I wonder if it’s still Lee Todd) needs to let the students know that that behavior will not be tolerated, and those kids should be kicked out in addition to whatever action the police try to take.
The other night, my Facebook feed was inundated with #BBN and post after post about the game. I personally don’t get it. The closest I got to going to a basketball game was singing the national anthem at a Vandy/UK game- I left after I was done.
I’m not opposed, as long as its a consistent response with all riots. We didn’t shoot in Ferguson. I think Kent State is the last time something like that happened.
It is mainly white people. Police killing white people is legal in most places.