Why? Why because we have something better to do, we have respect for the stadium, the city, the people? Yeah we can hate on our rival, but it’s not like we save it up until the next time like a grudge that grows into a riot match. What is up with those behaviors, so uncivilized. Cretins, they just don’t want to get along, well send the lot of ya to hell, Mars even.
It’s actually soccer hooliganism and we don’t play soccer in this country (for Americans unfamiliar with the term soccer, it’s also known as Canadian Lawn Dancing). Here in the US we play real football, which means the players are the hooligans. Soccer hooligans are the result of a pre-teen girls game used as an actual sport for men, even if they are British. If you’ve ever seen the game of soccer you’d understand why the crowd gets violent.
I’d be interested to compare alcohol consumption as a factor.
That is wrong on so many levels. It is the most popular UK wide sport true, but it is not only sport. Hell, it is not the biggest sport in many regions, Wales has Rugby, Yorkshire has a large Cricket following.
Please, using American sports as examples of masculinity and virility is ridiculous. Forty pounds of protective gear (and about 15 seconds of of play at a stretch) to play Rugby, gloves and mittens to play rounders and you won’t even let the damn batter get struck by a ball because it might leave a bruise,:rolleyes:
No, it is rare.
Are you sure? I thought it was fairly common for individual fights and such to break out, especially at college level games (football and basketball coming to mind). I know when I was going to college that such fights weren’t uncommon. Riots…THAT is fairly rare, in my experience.
Similar ticket prices. That’s one reason why there is very little “hooliganism”, despite outdated stereotypes such as those expressed in this thread. There are other reasons, but that’s one of them. Attending soccer matches is much more of a middle class/family thing these days. In some quarters they complain that crowds are too civilised now.
There’s also the likely contributing factor that European football fans will be attending an away game as part of a group via bus or train and often imbibing on their way.
You guys have never been to a Raiders game, obviously.
It used to happen often at hockey games bewteen the New York Islanders and the New York Rangers. Especially when the teams were both competitive at the same time. Nowadays it’s the Rangers that are the better team and the rivalry has lost much of its lustre.
But even then, the fights were usually isolated pockets of mayhem, not a free-for-all throughout the arena.
I have attended maybe 30-40 college football and basketball games total since 1967,
all but I think two of them in Chapel Hill NC, and I never saw or heard of a single fight.
What kind of a zoo did you attend, and how many fights did you (1) witness (2) hear of 2nd hand?
If violence were a significant problem at US sporting events you can be sure the media
would not be bashful about reporting it.
I will say that a few years before I was in school fights between teams during play may have
been more frequent than since. YTube has the full monte on a disgraceful brawl between
NC and Duke at Duke ca. 1962. I believe that was the one where Duke star Art Heyman was
arrested for slugging an NC cheerleader.
IMO there should be zero tolerance for such behavior, inlcudng on strike and you’re out expulsion.
University of Arizona, University of Maryland and UCLA. 
Probably more second hand (if by that you accept the local college newspaper or broadsheets) than eye witness too, since I wasn’t (and am not) a bit sports fan, but I’d say I witnessed at least a half dozen or more fights (mainly outside, in the parking lot, some in after game drinking parties at dorms or bars etc) while going to college games.
At pro games (mainly hockey) I’ve seen…oh, maybe 3-4 fights between individuals. I’ve never seen a riot at any event.
Totally agree. Of all the things to fight about, this to me is one of the silliest.
Can you demonstrate this actually happens after every major sports championship? Of course, you can’t. It’s ridiculous. The few notable examples are outliers.
The reason soccer hooliganism hasn’t caught on in the USA is the same reason soccer itself hasn’t caught on in the USA; because it just isn’t in fashion there. It has nothing to do with any of the silly stereotypes and nationalist jingo being put forth in this thread. It just happened to be something that caught on in the UK in the 1960s/1970s and spread to Europe from there. Since soccer’s never been a premier sport in the USA, and the two sports cultures are widely separated, it didn’t cross the ocean. There’s no other more complicated explanation.
Canadians are more similar to Europeans in terms of violence and cowboyism and all that blather, but we don’t have soccer riots. Why? 'Cause soccer isn’t popular here, and we’re across the ocean.
My WAG is the lower drinking age, for one. It’s 21 here in the States but 18 in the UK. Sure, our 19 year old men may drink but not as easily or as often, I’d wager, as the 19 year olds in the UK. Drunk 19 year old men don’t always make good choices or have strong impulse control.
The consistent fan violence I’ve seen here has been to do w/ college sport rivalries (Detroit-Colorado notwithstanding) and it seems as though it’s because the fans can actually sympathize w/ those athletes that attend their school. Maybe they don’t know the athlete personally but they have a big thing in common w/ them.
When Lions fans and Packers fans wind up near each other in the parking lot at Ford Field, they can say, “We rule and you suck!” but they really have no connection to the players besides being in the same city. That’s nothing to defend.
I don’t think there’s much hooliganism at the national team level.
You’re tying hooliganism to soccer, but I think that the link is coincidental. Clearly soccer can be a dominant sport in a culture without concomitant hooliganism. The experience in England actually demonstrates that. We used to have hooliganism, and now it’s mostly disappeared. And it has never been a huge problem in certain other major European soccer countries.
I think it’s more that certain societies, perhaps those experiencing unaccustomed economic hardship, happen to be prone to hooliganism, due to factors such as youth unemployment and lack of opportunities. A sort of tribal violence becomes an outlet for some people, and big sporting events attract rival tribes looking for trouble. The sport itself is irrelevant, except that it is likely to be the prestige sport - what matters is membership in what they see as the hardcore support of some big team.
The sport could be soccer, basketball, baseball, it doesn’t matter. It just happens that soccer is the biggest team sport in most of these countries.
Not enough looting opportunities at a stadium riot.
Yes there is, see Euro2000.
How much hooliganism is/was there in rugby? Cricket?
Is there a typical demographic profile of hooligans?
What British locations are best known for their hooliganism?
Hooliganism seems to have decreased in the last few decades, any ideas on what caused that decrease?