Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

The common denominator in the fans brawls is alcohol.   I no longer take my grandchildren to an MLB or NFL game becasue of the excessive drinking.  

and of course nearly all of these drunks get in their cars and drive after the checkered flag...

It's funny how different everyone's experiences can be based on nothing but luck.  I totally believe your story.  However, I know quite a few different fans who have traveled to MN when their team plays the Vikes and they have had nothing but positive things to say about the fans.  I know TONS of Packer fans being from the extreme northwestern corner of IL.  I also know a ton of Bear fans that have traveled to Lambeau for Bear/Packer games.  Almost all of them have had positive experiences as the overwhelming majority of Packer fans are easy going and will only engage in harmless banter.  However, one friend of mine, and his family, just got the luck (or unluck) of the draw and sat in front of 2 of the worst Packer fans WI had to offer.  Middle fingers in the faces of him and his kids everytime the Pack scored, beer intentionally spilled on them, and profanities shouted at his kids when they cheered for the Bears.  

I can tell you there is a HUGE difference in overall friendliness in different areas of the country.  It doesn't mean there aren't good people everywhere, but as a whole, you can definitely tell the difference in the way people treat the public in many of these areas, and how they act as a whole.  For example, Chicago is known by many big cities as friendly, hard working Midwesterners.  Makes me laugh because being 120 miles to the west, in farm country, I find Chicagoans to be overall loud, obnoxious, and the "hard-working" thing must be relative because I grew up doing more by 9:00 a.m. than I see anyone in downtown Chicago doing all day.  I always laughed at the "friendly" label until I traveled to other parts of the country.  My wife's family is from New York City, and Maine.  Hanging out with her family for a week, every other July at a lake in Maine is a great time.  But they all have an edge and when we go out in public, they are all what I would consider very rude.  But it's just their culture to be short, to the point, loud, and condescending.  We could sit on the beach at Old Orchard Beach Maine next to the same family for a week and never get eye contact with them.  Then, the next year go to a beach in Gulf Shores AL, and we are friends with 20 people on the beach within 10 minutes!!!!

Fan bases are not all the same.  They act like a pack of wolves.  If that pack of wolves is friendly, you will most likely have a pleasant experience with everyone, but may find some mean ones.  If that pack of wolves is unfriendly, you can still run into friendly fans.  (Unless you're a Cub's fan at a Brewers game-----then there are no friendly Brewer fans---or at least I haven't found any in the past 20 years)

99% of the time, add alcohol to an idiot and you get a bigger idiot.  99% of the time, add alcohol to a normal person and you get an idiot.  But don't let 99% of them give the rest of them a bad name.  

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Reminds me of an old Steve Martin joke. He asked a person why people do coke, the person replied it enhances their personalities, Martin replied what if they are  A-holes...still funny today.

While it used to be fairly common, I haven't seen a fight in the stands at a race track in years. Last one I remember was at Lincoln probably 10 years ago. I think there's several reasons for that - smaller crowds for regular shows nowadays, less people drinking at the races nowadays, older crowd at the races nowadays. There's also less families and friends of drivers sitting in the stands. They used to sit in groups decades ago and occasionally start arguing and fighting with other groups that were there supporting a different driver. Fans were very vocal and loud back then. These were the days when just about every small garage had a race car at their local track. In general I think there is also less fighting in society due to the harsher legal consequences.

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Me neither. Let them puppies hang.

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About 7 or 8 years ago we were visiting my in-laws in Phoenix over Easter and Canyon had a USAC Southwest series race so I decided to take my father-in-law and sister-in-law to their first ever race. RJ Johnson and Stevie Sussex traded sliders all through the feature and things got pretty heated on the track between them after the race. The next thing you know, the Johnson and Sussex families are brawling in the stands directly in front of us and actually ended up in our laps. It wasn't exactly the first impression I wanted racing to make on them but it was memorable. My father-in-law still brings it up to me.