If $10 beer, $20 parking and tickets that are quickly approaching the cost of a mortgage payment haven’t done enough for the fan experience, consider that in the past six months:
A Giants fan was beaten into a coma at Dodger Stadium on opening day, two fans were shot in the parking lot at a Raiders-49ers exhibition game, and then, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a Cowboys fan decides to bring a stun gun to the Meadowlands and Taser a few Jets fans.
It’s hard to decide what was more remarkable about that last incident: that with all the heightened security around New York and around that game, which included bomb sniffing dogs, how could somebody could actually sneak a weapon into the stadium?
Or that the offending Cowboys fan hasn’t been used as a campaign prop by Rick Perry. (Ben Bernanke, you’re next! Yee-ha!)
All manner of measures have been implemented at stadiums and arenas around the country to curb unruly behavior — increased security measures, more police, cutting off beer sales — but it hasn’t prevented the most egregious acts.
So, what to do about all these men behaving badly?
How about banning them — all of them?
That’s what is being done in Turkey, where the country’s soccer officials have taken a bold step to halt violence by some of Europe’s roughest crowds. Rather than banning all fans and playing in front of an empty house, any Turkish club sanctioned for unruly fan behavior will be allowed to only admit women and children under 12 to its matches, and must do so free of charge.
The first of those came Tuesday, when Fenerbahce, one of Turkey’s most storied clubs — and with some of its most notorious fans — played a 1-1 draw against Manisaspor in the Turkish League opener in front of more than 41,000 women and children.
The scene was extraordinary on several fronts.
Long lines of women, many holding babies or the hands of children, winded their way around the club’s Istanbul stadium as they waited to be searched by female police officers. Many women and children wore Fenerbahce’s blue-and-gold jerseys, but there were also a number of Galatasaray or Besiktas jerseys in the crowd — something that would typically incite fighting.
Players from both teams tossed flowers into the crowd beforehand. And instead of jeers, taunts — or worse — Manisaspor players were greeted with applause. The women and kids sang Fenerbahce songs, but in a higher key they did not sound as menacing.
It was a far different scene in July, when Fenerbahce’s exhibition against Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk was stopped when hundreds of fans ran onto the field, some of them swinging stools.
“It was such a fun and pleasant atmosphere,” Manisaspor midfielder Omer Aysan told reporters after Tuesday’s game. “At first, we Manisaspor players couldn’t believe in what we were seeing and hearing.”
And with good reason. If it is easy to imagine what a crowd like this would be like in the United States — a WNBA game, perhaps — women are not often seen (or heard) at sporting events in Turkey, which straddles Europe and Asia culturally as well as geographically.
“The same anthems and the same chants as usual were sung,” said Yasein Mercil, a female member of Fenerbahce’s executive board. “The women knew all the words. This really is a historic day. For the first time in the world, only women and children watched a game.”
Hopefully, it will not be the last.
Imagine what the parking lot must have been like late Sunday afternoon at Candlestick Park when, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, police said that several fans tried to prevent a car from backing out of a parking space. A fight ensued and three people — including a security guard — were hospitalized. Police arrested three people, one of whom had brandished a knife. While searching the suspects' car, police found a pistol whose serial numbers had been filed off hidden in the center console.
This came just a month after the 49ers reduced tailgating hours, hired more police and put their exhibition series with the Raiders on hold after the shooting incident. The NFL security chief came to the next exhibition game and pronounced everything A-OK — after all, it was a different type of crowd that comes to regular-season games.
Well, apparently not different enough.
Not enough women and children to show the other grown-ups how to act.
