Sports and Play Chapter 6: Violence in Sports

Research on pain and injury among athletes helps us understand that violence in sports has real consequences

Rates of disabling injuries vary by sport, but they are high enough in many sports to constitute a public health issue. The "normal" brutal body contact and borderline violence in contact and collision sports regularly cause arthritis, concussions, brain trauma, bone fractures, torn ligaments, and other injuries many of which cause permanent damage that requires future medical attention because they affect health and well-being. In other words, the violence inherent in these sports takes a definite toll on athletes.

Despite the risk and reality of pain and injuries,...

many women in contact sports find that the physical intensity and body contact in their sports make them feel alive and aware.

The roots of violence on the playing field are deep. They're grounded in

overconformity to the sport ethic, commercialization, definitions of masculinity, and competition strategies.

First, violent sports may attract people who already feel comfortable about doing violence on and off the field,

regardless of what they may learn in their sport.

Despite the recent publicity given to a few women fighters, violent sports are viewed by many people as

support for their belief that hierarchical distinctions between men and women are grounded in nature and cannot be altered

The belief that watching sports is associated with violence has led some people to wonder if watching sports—the Super Bowl, for example—is associated with

temporary spikes in the rates of domestic violence in a community or the nation as a whole.

Violence involving overconformity to the norms of the sport ethic is partly related to

the identity insecurities of athletes in high-performance sports. Athletes learn that "you're only as good as your last game," and they know that their identities and status as team members must be regularly reaffirmed through their actions on the field. They often take extreme measures to prove themselves, even if it involves violence.

Research on the topic of sexual violence and assault has also increased during these years after nearly

two decades of generally ignoring reports. In the following two sections I highlight this research and the most egregious cases.

The dynamics through which this occurs are difficult for athletes to explain and certainly difficult for "outsiders" to...

understand. many athletes who play sports that are inherently violent say little about what they feel and why they enjoy what they do. They don't expect others to understand, because those of us outside this unique social world live mundane lives that don't involve the rush of pushing the envelope and living on the edge with peers who are the best at what they do.

Police and political authorities initially described the rioters as thugs and professional anarchists with criminal intent, but

videos showed that most of them were from local Vancouver families that strongly disapproved of their destructive actions (Mason, 2011)

In a similar manner, soccer venues in parts of Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, and Latin America have become staging areas for

young men to collectively express themselves, sometimes in violent and defiant ways. Their violence may express their general sense of alienation, objection to the commercialization of soccer and soccer clubs, nationalist and/or racist attitudes, special political agendas, dissatisfaction with ruling politicians—including powerful dictators, and their disdain for police that use brutality on the streets and, in many cases, enforce the interests of oppressive political regimes.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

-Orwell 1945

A prerequisite for effective crowd control strategies is an awareness of factors associated with spectator violence. These include the following:

1. Crowd size and the standing or seating patterns of spectators. 2. Composition of the crowd in terms of age, sex, social class, and racial/ethnic mix. 3. The importance and meaning of the event for spectators. 4. The history of the relationship between the teams and among spectators. 5. Crowd-control strategies used at the event (police, tear gas, attack dogs, surveillance cameras, or other security measures). 6. Alcohol consumption by the spectators. 7.Location of the event (neutral site or home site of one of the opponents). 8.Spectators' reasons for attending the event and their expectations for outcomes. 9. The importance of the team as a source of identity for spectators (class identity, ethnic or national identity, regional or local identity, club or gang identity).

According to Bill Braniff, the executive director of START—the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, located at the University of Maryland—certain sports events are attractive targets for terrorism because of the following factors (Hruby, 2013c):

1. The media are on location. 2. The event is communal and seen as representing the values and spirit of a community or society. 3. When people seek explanations for the attack, it provides the terrorists opportunity to deliver their political messages. 4. The recurring media attention given to a special sports event serves as a regular reminder of the attack and perpetuates fears associated with it.

Research done by sociologist Jerry Lewis, author of the book Sports Fan Violence in North America (2007), indicates that most celebratory riots are associated with the following six general conditions:

1.A natural urban gathering place for fans. 2.The presence of a "cadre" of young, white men. 3.Strong identification with the team. 4.An event with high stakes such as a national or international championship. 5.A key or deciding game or match in a playoff or championship series. 6. A close, exciting contest.

A terrorist attack during the 2013 Boston Marathon killed...

3 people and injured 264. And the most rapidly growing spectator sport in the US in recent years is mixed martial arts, with its often-brutal fights staged in fenced cages.

This record suggests that terrorists do not usually target sport events. Through the 110-year history of the Olympics there have been two terrorist attacks, one in 1972 when members of a Palestinian terrorist group called Black September entered the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, went to rooms being occupied by Israeli athletes and coaches, shot and killed a wrestling coach and a weightlifter, and captured nine Israeli athletes.

After a 21-hour standoff and a poorly planned rescue attempt, seventeen people were dead—ten Israeli athletes, one coach, one West German police officer, and five terrorists. The remaining terrorists were sought out and killed by Israeli commandos.

The participation of women in violent sports often creates a dilemma for those of us who advocate progressive changes in gender ideology.

Although participation contradicts the ideological belief that women are frail and vulnerable, it also reaffirms beliefs that have traditionally disadvantaged women through history. For this reason, some of us who support gender equity in sports hesitate to encourage girls and women to participate in violent sports.

As women came forward to report sex-abuse in gymnastics, a host of new and unresolved cases of sexual assault and abuse were also reported. The most significant involved USA Swimming "where the sexual abuse of underage swimmers by their coaches and others in positions of power within the sport was commonplace and even accepted by top officials and coaches"

An investigation found that over the 20 year period between 1997 and 2017 at least 252 "swim coaches and officials [had] been arrested, charged by prosecutors, or disciplined by USAS for sexual abuse or misconduct against individuals under 18" (Reid, 2018a). This involved at least 590 alleged victims of crimes, including statutory rape, rape, and child pornography. USAS also kept lists of dozens of coaches who had been arrested for abuse- related crimes but never banned them, so they now coach in other programs where parents and children do not know about their records. Additionally, some coaches banned by USAS and other NGBs have returned to coaching (PBS, 2018). During the same years that USAS was being investigated, it's executives spent nearly $80,000 to lobby against legislation that would make it easier for abuse victims to sue coaches and the sport organizations that employed them.

Efforts to change contact sports to minimize violence have elicted strong responses from men who don't want to see collision sports "go soft."

At the same time, the NFL has recently spent millions of dollars on commercial messages about their attempts to make football safer for players at all levels of competition (Montez de Oca et al., 2016). However, as with other sport organizations, it is difficult to determine whether these messages represent effective changes in their sports or if they are mostly public relations hype.

Certain forms of violence are built into the culture and structure of particular sports

Athletes in these sports learn to use violence as a strategy, even though it may cause them pain and injury. Controlling institutionalized violence is difficult because it requires changing the culture and structure of particular sports—something that most people in governing bodies are hesitant to do.

Second, off the field violence among athletes may be due to unique situations encountered more often by athletes than other people.

Athletes known for their toughness on the field may be encouraged, dared, or taunted by others to be tough on the streets. In some cases, they may be challenged to fight because of their reputations in sports. If trouble occurs and athletes are arrested for fighting in these circumstances, it is misleading to say that their actions were caused by what they learned in sports.

Violence is not new to sports.

Blood sports were popular among the ancient Greeks and throughout the Roman Empire. Deaths occurred regularly in connection with ritual games among the Mayans and Aztecs. Tournaments in medieval Europe were designed to train men for war and often resulted in death.

As sports became formally organized, official rules prohibited certain forms of violence that had been common previously.

Bloodshed decreased, and there was more emphasis on self-control to restrict the expression of violent impulses during competition.

Between 1900 and the early 1940s, crowd violence remained common:

Bottles and other objects were thrown at players and umpires, and World Series games were disrupted by fans angered by umpires' calls or the actions of opposing players (Scheinin, 1994). Players feared being injured by spectators as much as they feared the "bean balls" thrown regularly at their heads by opposing pitchers.

costs for the pre-9/11 Sydney Games were $180 million, or $12,500 per athlete (all data include Olympic and Paralympic athletes).

But after 9/11, security costs for the much smaller winter games in Salt Lake City were $500 million, or $131,100 per athlete—a more than tenfold per athlete increase from two years earlier. This pattern has continued with Beijing spending $6.5 billion for security in 2008, or $430,000 per athlete. For London 2012, the security bill was an estimated $1.6 billion, or $114,300 per athlete. The cost for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro was a staggering $2.2 billion, or nearly $196,000 per athlete (Zimbalist, 2017). Overall, security now constitutes about 12 to 20 percent of the total budget for the Olympics, and the worldwide security industry is now valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Research is under way to improve helmets used in certain sports and to develop other protective technologies.

But the brain is difficult to protect whenever there is a forceful impact to or a violent twisting or snapping of the head. The brain is surrounded by fluid that prevents it from routinely coming into contact with the inside of the skull.

Frustration riots are rare and less common than celebratory riots.

Fans of teams that lose a deciding game or match in an important event are more likely to exit the scene of the loss and deal with their disappointment by themselves or with close friends.

Of course, not all sport crowds in the North America are models of good behavior

Fights do occur, fans say nasty and sometimes hateful things to each other, referees, and players. Spectators have also thrown objects onto the playing surface to express their dissatisfaction with the poor play of their team or perceived bad calls by referees and umpires. But most cases of violence inside stadiums and arenas involve individuals or small groups of fans; they are not planned, politically motivated, or executed by large, organized collections of spectators with agendas unrelated to the event.

Rule changes can be helpful, but there is no way to reduce the violence in certain sports without making major structural changes in how the sports are played.

For example, a sport like ice hockey can reduce hits to the head with rule changes, and youth programs can eliminate body checking altogether, but football presents a different set of challenges. Players cannot avoid head impacts as the game is now played. Head hits will occur regardless of advice on how to block, tackle or strengthen the neck to serve as a shock absorber.

Only under very specific conditions would participation in a combat sport be associated with a reduction of off the field violence.

For this to occur, participation would have to take place in a situation where there is an emphasis on self-control, respect for self and others, patience, responsibility, humility, and nonviolence away from the sport (Trulson, 1986).

a former club level gymnast, came forward in 2016 and described in vivid detail how she had been sexually abused over multiple years by Nassar

Her disclosures led over 100 other gymnasts to come forward with their stories of how Nassar had sexually abused them under the guise of medical treatment. While this occurred over 20 years in gymnastics and the MSU athletic department, none of the leaders in those organization took reports of abuse seriously. They ignored, covered up, and filed away reports without following state law and reporting suspected abuse to the police or child protection officials in their communities.

2011 post-event riot in Vancouver, Canada, following the loss of the Vancouver Canucks to the Boston Bruins in the deciding game of the National Hockey League Stanley Cup championship series.

Hundreds of young people started fires, turned over cars, and broke windows in a downtown area. Property damage was dramatic in terms of its apparent senselessness, and dozens of people were injured, primarily in confrontations with poorly prepared police officers. Unlike riots that occur in connection with political, labor, or civil rights demonstrations, this one was short-lived and people quickly exited the area as the police presence grew.

Hockey women statement

I like a physical game. You get more fired up. I think when you get hit . . . like when you're fighting for a puck in the corner, when you're both fighting so you're both working hard and maybe the elbows are flying, that just makes you put more effort into it (Theberge, 1999, p. 147).

people associated with football realize that the vitality and commercial success of their sport

If parents don't think the game is safe, they will encourage their children to engage in alternative sports. As with any sport, an inability to attract young people leads to a smaller pool of talent, which usually reduces spectator interest and the vitality of the sport as a part of popular culture.

Additional stories about Knight's physical and psychological violence directed to players and similar stories about other coaches begs a question:

If parents treated their children and teachers treated their students this way, what would happen to them? In many cases, they'd be reported to child protective services and fired from their teaching jobs. So how is this not defined as unacceptable violence when coaches do it? Is being violent considered an appropriate leadership method in sports? Does this apply only to coaches with impressive winning records? Is it because coaches who use violence also tell their players how much they care for them and treat them "as if they were their children"?

Social historians also point out that rates of violence in sports do not automatically decrease over time.

In fact, as actions and emotional expressions have become more regulated and controlled in modern societies, players and spectators view "controlled" violence in sports as exciting.

Eventually, the heart-wrenching and tear-filled stories of women who had been exploited and abused culminated in lawsuits filed against USAG, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), and MSU. The repercussions of over 500 reported cases of abuse by Nassar have been significant. They include the following:

Larry Nassar was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 40-175 years in prison. The president of the USOC along with it's chief of sport performance and the president of USAG were fired or resigned in disgrace with possible criminal cases pending, and all members of the USAG Board of Directors were forced by the USOC to resign. USAG lost its corporate sponsors, was forced to declare bankruptcy and now faces a legal settlement in which it and the USOC agreed to pay up to $100 million in damages to 265 victims of the abuse they ignored. The MSU president was fired and charged with two felony counts, the athletic director was forced to resign, the university settled out of court with more than 300 victims for a sum of $500 million, the majority of which is scheduled to be paid by raising student fees and selling state bonds that Michigan taxpayers will eventually pay off. The USAG severed its relationship with the Karolyi Ranch where much of Nassar's abuse occurred. Run by Bela and Marta Karolyi, it had been the official training center for the national team, but national team athletes, including Simone Biles and others, refused to return to where they hade been assaulted. In 2018, the US Congress passed The Protecting Young Athletes from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act which requires the national governing bodies (NGBs) for Olympic sports along with all amateur sports organizations to report all allegations of sex-abuse to law enforcement or child-welfare officials. It also authorized the United States Center for Safe Sport to ensure that US Olympic athletes can safely report allegations of abuse and that NGB officials follow strict standards for protecting athletes and detecting and reporting abuses (Moran, 2019).

In fact, apart from the standard male-dominated sports media, the biggest sports story in 2016-2018 was that hundreds of girls and young women were sexually assaulted over nearly 20 years by

Larry Nassar, the sport medicine doctor who worked with athletes at USA Gymnastics (USAG), the athletic department at Michigan State University (MSU), and other sport organizations (Lavigne & Murphy, 2019; Snider, 2018). This and related stories in other sports might never have been told without the persistent investigative reporting of journalists at the Indianapolis Star and the articles published by their colleagues at USA Today from early 2016 through the time I am writing this in early-2020.

Players often are confused by coaches who are violent but kind; abusive, but supportive; and mean, but nurturing.

Making sense of these contradictions in a sport setting seems to be difficult, although it has been done in domestic violence shelters and the recovery programs for domestic violence victims.

In Pat Conroy's classic novel The Prince of Tides (1986), there is a scene in which a football coach in the US address his team and describes the ideal football player. He uses words that many athletes in heavy-contact sports hear during their careers:

Now a real hitter is a head-hunter who puts his head in the chest of his opponents and ain't happy if his opponent is still breathing after the play. A real hitter doesn't know what fear is except when he sees it in the eyes of a ball carrier he's about to split in half. A real hitter loves pain, loves the screaming and the sweating and the brawling and the hatred of life down in the trenches. He likes to be at the spot where the blood flows and the teeth get kicked out. That's what this sport's about, men. (p. 384)

To test the connection between the hours during which NFL games occurred and certain forms of criminal violence, Beth Adubato (2016) from the New York Institute of Technology worked with the

Philadelphia police department and analyzed arrest records through the 2008-09 and 2009-10 NFL seasons. Her findings, based on a thorough statistical analysis, indicated that there was a significantly greater number of domestic violence arrests during the hours for which NFL games were televised than during the same hours on comparable non-sports Sundays. Domestic violence arrests were also higher on NFL game days than on game days in hockey, basketball, and baseball, including the World Series during those years. Overall, Adubato concluded that "the average football gameday is more dangerous to women—as victims of domestic violence—than the other days of the week"

The recent publicity about concussions and other serious physical and health problems experienced by athletes who play violent sports has initiated a number of moves to control violence on the field and its consequences.

Representatives of football, hockey, boxing, and other sports now stress rule changes and tactics to promote safety rather than violence. Media commentators, players, and sport administrators think twice before using words and images that glorify violence on the field. They understand that the commercial success of particular sports is endangered if parents don't encourage children to play them or if young people decide that playing them is not worth the risk of serious injuries. At the state and community levels in the United States there are legislators seeking to ban tackle football for children under 13 years old and to ban heading the ball in soccer for players under 15 years old. Similar legislation is being considered in other countries.

The focus on male athletes should not distract attention from other sport-related assault issues. For example, sexual assaults, including statutory rape, by coaches have a significant impact in sports and on people's lives

Research by journalists at the Seattle Times found that 159 coaches in the state of Washington (where only 2 percent of the US population lives) were fired or reprimanded for sexual offenses between 1993 and 2003.

There are multiple reasons that people accept violence in sports but define it as criminal behavior off the field.

Some believe that it is a natural expression of masculinity, and others believe that allowing it in sports will decrease a man's need to express violent impulses off the field. But evidence supports neither of these beliefs.

Today, security strategies are part of the everyday routine at major sports venues.

Spectators are scanned or searched when they enter venues, and there is strict enforcement of rules governing what may be brought into the venues.

Violence that occurs in stadiums and arenas takes many forms.

Spectators may verbally or physically attack opposing fans or spectators who represent an adversary outside the stadium, such as a rival gang. There may be invasions of a playing field to express outrage about a referee's decision or a play that is seen as unfair. Bigoted or racist spectators may attack members of a group they define as an enemy. Organized collections of spectators may engage in violent displays to support or oppose decisions made by team administrators, political officials, or other individuals or organizations.

Similarly, a panic was incited in 2001 at a Premier League soccer match in Accra, Ghana, when police fired tear gas into an unruly crowd.

Spectators rushed to exit doors, which had been locked, and 123 people were crushed to death by the force of the crowd (Langton, 2015). Most panics at sport venues follow this pattern: spectators are frightened and rush to limited or locked exits where many are trampled or crushed to death.

photo of a young man trying to set fire to a rag stuffed in the fuel tank of a police car.

The car did not blow up, but the young man was identified as a member of Canada's junior men's national water polo team and an academic all-star who had received an athletic scholarship to attend a US university at the end of the summer. After he turned himself in to police, he was suspended from the national team. it appeared that this young man and others like him were mimicking what they perceived to be the culture of Canadian hockey as they displayed male rage, tore off their shirts, and yelled as if they were claiming domination through the destruction they caused (Zirin, 2011b).

The definition by the World Health Organization

The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation

Perceived hostility and violence might also be defused if players and coaches make public announcements emphasizing respect for the game and for opponents.

The use of competent and professionally trained officials is also important, because when officials maintain control of a game and make calls the spectators define as fair, the likelihood of spectator violence decreases.

A suicide bomber attack in 2014 killed 57 spectators and injured over 50 others during the final minutes of a volleyball match in Eastern Afghanistan (Haidary, 2014).

The victims included young men and boys along with police officers. Men's volleyball is popular with spectators in that part of the country.

Unlike most warfare, terrorism targets civilians to create pervasive fear in a target population.

Therefore, terrorism is seldom random; it is strategically planned so that there will be maximum media coverage. The intent is that coverage will spread and sustain fear and make people feel that the very fabric of their social order is being torn apart.

Efforts to control brutal body contact require changes in gender ideology and the cultures of certain sports.

These changes won't occur without persistent and thoughtful strategies to document the dangers of the actions and the language that people use to reproduce violent sport cultures and the gender ideology that supports them. People should also calculate the cost of injuries due to brutal body contact and other types of violence in terms of medical expenses, lost work time and wages, school days missed, disability payments, family problems, and even reductions in life expectancy. Looking at these statistics will help us understand more fully the connections between sport participation and health.

Violence is also incorporated into game strategies when coaches use players as designated agents of intimidation and violence for their teams.

These players are called "enforcers," "goons," and "hit men," and they are expected to protect teammates and strategically assist their teams by intimidating, provoking, fighting with, or injuring opponents. Their violent acts have been an accepted part of certain sports, especially ice hockey, but some athletes are beginning to challenge this aspect of sport culture because it may cause head trauma that could lead to CTE (chronic traumatic encephalitis) at a relatively young age.

Spectators often think about violence in sports in a paradoxical way:

They accept brutal body contact and borderline violence, but the injuries caused by violence make them uneasy. They want violence without consequences—like the fictionalized violence they see in the media and video games in which characters engage in brutality without being seriously or permanently injured.

Sexual violence, assault, abuse, and exploitation cases are not limited to the United States. They have been and continue to be reported in other countries.

They nearly always involve young female athletes whose lives and sport careers are controlled by male coaches under conditions where there is little or no transparency or accountability for their actions. The administrators in the sport organizations charged with enforcing rules and protecting athletes have generally ignored reports of athlete mistreatment, especially when violence is involved, for fear they will lose funding, sponsors, and their reputations if cases become public.

Brutal body contact

This includes actions common in certain sports and accepted by athletes as part of sport participation. Examples are collisions, hits, tackles, blocks, body checks, and other forms of forceful physical contact that can produce injuries. Most people in society define this forceful physical contact as dangerous, although they don't classify it as illegal or criminal. It may even be encouraged by coaches. For example, when asked about it, one coach explained: "We expect it, we demand it. . . . Our brand is a physical brand of football . . . you know, pound on these people until they give up" (Frontline, 2011).

Criminal violence

This includes actions that are clearly outside the law to the point that athletes condemn them and law enforcement officials prosecute them as crimes. Examples are assaults during games that appear to be premeditated and severe enough to kill or seriously maim a player. Criminal violence is relatively rare, and when it occurs it is seldom prosecuted as a crime because sports are seen as special social contexts in which risks of physical harm are voluntarily accepted by athletes.

Quasi-criminal violence

This includes actions that violate the formal rules of the game, public laws, and even informal norms among players. Examples are cheap shots, late hits, sucker punches, and flagrant fouls that endanger players' bodies. Fines and suspensions are usually imposed on players who engage in this violence and most athletes condemn it as a rejection of the game norms.

Borderline violence.

This includes actions that violate the rules of the game but are accepted by most players and coaches as consistent with the norms of the sport ethic and as useful competitive strategies. Examples are the "brushback" pitch in baseball, the forcefully placed elbow or knee in soccer and basketball, the strategic bump used by distance runners to put another runner off stride, the fistfight in ice hockey, and the forearm to the ribs of a quarterback in football. Although these actions are expected, they may provoke retaliation by other players. Official sanctions and fines are not usually severe for borderline violence. However, public pressure to increase the severity of sanctions has grown in recent years, and the severity of punishments has increased in some sports.

Whenever thousands of people gather together for an occasion intended to generate collective emotions and excitement, it's not surprising that crowd dynamics and circumstances influence their actions.

This is especially true at sports events, where collective action is easily fueled by what social psychologists call emotional contagion

When women participate in violent sports they disrupt the "logic" used to reaffirm traditional beliefs about gender.

This leads some people to argue that women should not participate in these sports, and to treat the women who do as jokes, oddities, or freaks of nature.

Commercialization, professionalization, and globalization have given rise to forms of instrumental violence in many sports.

This means that goal-oriented and entertainment-oriented violence have increased, at least temporarily, in many Western societies.

Research also indicates that nearly all crowd violence involves men.

This suggests that ideas about manhood and the expression of masculinity influence crowd dynamics and the actions of spectators. Female fans may become involved in fights, but not nearly as often as men are

With the emergence of modern sports, violence among sport spectators decreased, but it remained common by today's standards. For example, a baseball game in 1900 was described by a journalist in this way:

Thousands of gun slinging Chicago Cubs fans turned a Fourth of July doubleheader into a shoot-out at the OK Corral, endangering the lives of players and fellow spectators. Bullets sang, darted, and whizzed over players' heads as the rambunctious fans fired round after round whenever the Cubs scored against the gun-shy Philadelphia Phillies. The visiting team was so intimidated it lost both games . . . at Chicago's West Side Grounds (in Nash and Zullo, 1989, p. 133).

The importance of being aware of the full context in which sexual assaults occur was seen in a Steubenville, Ohio, case.

Two high-profile football team members were found guilty of raping an unconscious sixteen-year-old female student, whom they repeatedly and brutally dehumanized at parties with teammates in attendance. A video of young men at one of the parties contained such shocking and misogynist statements that it attracted nationwide attention and news coverage

Brutal body contact is the most difficult type of violence to control. It is grounded in the culture of power and performance sports and dominant gender ideology in a society.

Unfortunately, about 90 percent of the serious injuries in these sports occur within the rules of the games and contests. This means that many men inevitably pay the price for their destructive definitions of sports and masculinity.

Oddly enough, some of the most dangerous and destructive crowd violence occurs during the celebrations that follow victories in important sport events

Until recently, when middle-class, white college students in the US tore down goalposts after football victories or ransacked seats and threw seat pads and other objects onto the field, it was treated as displays of youthful exuberance and loyalty to the university.

By far, more people have died and been injured in panics and violent accidents than by any form of intentional spectator violence. The largest number of deaths in a sport-related panic occurred in Lima, Peru, in 1964 during an Argentina versus Peru soccer match to qualify for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

When a well-known fan stormed the field to dispute a referee's call late in the game, he was beaten by police, which caused thousands to rush onto the field, with 300 to 320 people trampled to death in the process.

in late-2015 there was a failed suicide bomb attempt during a soccer game in Paris's Stade de France.

When denied entry to the stadium, the three terrorists blew themselves up, but there were no other fatalities.

Most people who watch media sports outside the home restrict their emotional expressions to verbal comments.

When they express anger, they nearly always direct it at the players, coaches, referees, or media commentators rather than fellow viewers. Even when emotional outbursts are defined as too loud or inappropriate, fellow viewers usually try to control the offender informally and peacefully. When fans from opposing teams watch an event at the same location, there often are sources of mutual identification that defuse differences and discourage physical violence, although verbal comments may become heated.

When athletes in contact sports are arrested for violent crimes, people wonder if their violence off the field is related to the violent strategies they've learned on the field. An NFL player raised this issue with the following comment:

When you think about it, it is a strange thing that we do. During a game we want to kill each other. Then we're told to shake hands and drive home safely. Then a week later we try to kill each other again (Freeman, 1998, p. 1).

Violence in sports is not limited to men. However, research indicates that if we want to understand violence in sports, we must understand gender ideology and issues of masculinity in culture. Sociologist Mike Messner explains:

Young males come to sport with identities that lead them to define their athletic experience differently than females do. Despite the fact that few males truly enjoy hitting and being hit, and that one has to be socialized into participating in much of the violence commonplace in sport, males often view aggression, within the rule-bound structure of sport, as legitimate and "natural." (1992, p. 67)

At present it is difficult to accurately identify concussions on the sidelines.

Youth, high school, and many college teams don't have the resources to hire neurologists with the training to do so. Sideline concussion tests are useful, although their reliability depends on the qualifications of those administering them and the cooperation of the athletes taking them.

For many athletes in heavy-contact sports, their participation involves...

a complex and intense mixture of passion, pleasure, violence, anxiety, fear, and pain that creates unique experiences for them. This intoxicating mixture of contradictory emotions is linked to the desire to dominate and control others and disrupt an opponent's desire to do the same

People who enjoy playing or watching collision sports may not feel comfortable in admitting this, but the desire for control over others is...

a major reason for violence in sports, and it also is a reason that we don't often talk about it in explicit terms.

Emotioanl contagion

a process through which social norms are formed rapidly and are followed in a nearly spontaneous manner by large numbers of people. Although this does not always lead to violence, it increases the possibility of violent crowd movements as well as confrontations between collections of spectators and between spectators and agents of social control, such as the police. This also is a factor in post-event violence.

Spectators have often used violence on the field as an indicator of player commitment and dedication

a sign of their willingness to put their bodies on the line for the sake of team pride and victory. For this reason, brutal body contact and borderline violence have been used by players and perceived by spectators as necessary for achieving victories and championships.

Although there is no tested theory to explain involvement in a celebratory riot, young men might be seeking reaffirmation of their identification with

a winning team and seeking status by engaging in actions that document their presence at a memorable occasion that they can discuss and brag about for the rest of their lives.

Although each of the studies and literature reviews include factors that may explain this pattern, I feel comfortable hypothesizing that violence against women by male athletes is associated with a sport culture characterized by support for the following beliefs:

a. that violence is an effective strategy for establishing manhood, achieving status as an athlete, and controlling women. b. that athletes should not be held to the same normative standards that apply to others in a community. c. that people outside the fraternity of elite athletes do not deserve the respect or concern that athletes reserve for each other. d. that most women are sexually attracted to athletes and can be sexually exploited without consequences.

Furthermore, in certain sports, an athlete's ability to do violence and endure it when perpetrated by others is used to...

affirm an athlete identity Sociologist Allan Johnson (2013) summarizes one of the major research findings about violence when he notes the following: Violence is primarily about control. Violence works. It makes people do what they otherwise would not.

the desire of developers and some politicians to gentrify the city, move the poor and homeless out, increase property values, and provide services for new urban elite residents seeking upscale housing, restaurants, and entertainment—

all in a highly policed and secure environment. At the same time, the new narrative of fear leads people to seek security over privacy and accept a new high-tech approach to policing and social control.

Between 2015 and the time I am writing this in early 2020, there have been uncounted

allegations, reports, criminal charges, out of court settlements, trials, convictions, and major failures to address sexual violence and sexual assault issues in sport organizations. The cases have involved athletes, coaches, and team doctors. The victims have been child, teen, and adult athletes, and in most cases, females.

Being aware of the historical, social, economic, and political issues that often underlie crowd violence is

also important. Restrictive law-and-order responses to crowd violence may be temporarily effective, but they will not eliminate the underlying tensions and conflicts that often fuel violence. Policies dealing with oppressive forms of inequality, economic problems, unemployment, political marginalization, racism, bigotry, and distorted definitions of masculinity are needed. These factors often lead to tension, conflict, and violence.

These and many similar examples indicate that violence in sports is

an important topic of study to understand today.

We often think of violence as actions that are...

are illegal or unsanctioned, but there are situations in which the use of violence is socially encouraged and approved. For instance, when violence is tied to a rejection of social norms, it is usually classified as illegal and punished.

Players at all levels of organized football killed and maimed each other

at rates that were far higher than the death and injury rates in football today. There are more injuries today because there are more players and this makes violence in certain sports a serious problem that must be addressed. But to say it is caused mainly by commercialization and money is a mistake.

More research is needed to understand the team cultures created in connection with particular sports, the meanings that

athletes attach to their actions, and the place of violence in sport cultures more generally. Sport participation does not automatically teach people to control violence, nor does the violence used in certain sports inevitably carry over to other relationships and settings.

This makes it increasingly expensive to

attend high-profile sport events at the same time that security costs are frequently paid with public money, meaning that the general population pays for the safety and comfort of those wealthy enough to buy tickets. The fear of terrorism has many consequences.

it is difficult for organized groups of fans sharing strong social or political attitudes to obtain unified

blocks of tickets at a major event so they can express feelings through violent displays, as happens with some regularity in other parts of the world. For these reasons most spectators at North American sport venues limit their expressive actions to loud cheering, stomping feet to make noise, waving objects to show team loyalty, and verbally taunting referees, opposing players, and fans.

Between 2013 and 2020 over 100 lawsuits have been filed against the NCAA by individuals and groups of current and former college athletes seeking damages for

brain injuries they attribute to head trauma experienced while playing college football and other sports. These suits claim that the NCAA failed to do one or more of the following: (1) recognize the problem and take actions that protected athletes from head trauma, (2) teach proper tackling techniques to avoid head trauma, (3) implement system-wide procedures for dealing with concussions on the field, and (4) educate "student-athletes" about head trauma and concussion issues. These legal issues are complex, and the NCAA has already paid out millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements.

The most frequently used typology of on-the-field violence among players would developed

by the late Mike Smith (1983), a Canadian sociologist concerned about the consequences of hockey violence (1983; see Young, 2019). Smith identified four categories of violence in sports: 1. Brutal body contact 2. Borderline violence 3. Quasi-criminal violence 4. Criminal violence

Existing protective equipment may minimize damage to the skull in the case of a violent impact, but it

cannot prevent the brain from slamming into the skull or rotating forcefully enough to damage brain cells. This is why some people argue that the brain cannot be protected and that new technologies give athletes the false impression that they can sustain violent impact to their heads without suffering negative health consequences. Until there is a technology that prevents the brain from moving inside the skull, using helmets to protect the outside of the skull will not prevent brain damage.

In other cases they will be standing up or chanting for justice in the face of repressive political regimes or delivering powerful political messages through

card displays, chants, or orchestrated action (Doidge & Lieser, 2018). When these expressions are contrary to the social and political positions of other fans in the stadium or officials policing the events, it is difficult to avoid physical confrontations.

commercialization has never been the primary

cause of violence in sports. If violent sports are commercially successful in a community or society, it's because people want to play and watch them.

A marathon is a particularly soft target for terrorism because there is no

central security checkpoint for spectators, who can access the race at many points along the 26.2-mile course. Despite this, a study done by START revealed that of the hundreds of marathons held worldwide in the twenty years preceding the 2013 Boston Marathon, only six had been sites for terrorist attacks (START, 2013). Three of these occurred in Northern Ireland (in 1998, 2003, and 2005) where political and social divisions between Protestants and Catholics have a long and violent history. But in each case, bombs were discovered and defused before they could explode.

Violence also has significant consequences for athletes and presents...

challenges for those who wish to control it.

Crowd violence, therefore, is as much a gender issue as it is a racial, ethnic, or social-class issue, and controlling it effectively over the long run requires

changes in gender ideology and ideas about masculinity as much as buying expensive surveillance systems and hiring additional police to patrol the sidelines at every event.

The National Hockey League (NHL) tried to avoid a similar settlement by offering 318 former players a $19 million settlement in late 2018, but many players, who suspect they suffer from CTE,

chose to sue the NHL as individuals rather than joining a class action suit. League representatives have long insisted that there is no causal connection between CTE and the repeated head hits suffered during years of on-ice fighting and body checks--penalized and not penalized (Editor, 2019). But there is mounting evidence that brain damage has and continues to occur.

Recent discussions of the consequences of violence on the field have focused primarily on football, although there also are

concerns about ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, boxing, and mixed martial arts. Most discussions have been in response to research showing a relationship between head trauma—including concussions and repetitive sub-concussive hits to the head—and the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and other forms of brain damage (Fainaru-Wadaand and Fainaru, 2017; Goldman, 2018; Gordon, 2018; Tagge et al. 2018).

On the other hand, athletes who engage in quasi-and criminal violence are generally...

condemned by coaches, teammates, and spectators.

Concussions and repeated head trauma experienced in football and other sports have recently been

connected with serious long-term health problems such as dementia.

Venue violence does occur in the United States and Canada, but not frequently enough or in patterns that

constitute a significant threat to the safety and well-being of spectators. This is partly because North American sports events generally attract diversified crowds in which violent actions are voluntarily held in check most of the time for fear of injuring children or others defined as vulnerable. It also is due to the tendency among North American fans to see sport events as a realm that is separate from social and political realities outside the stadium.

Boxing and mixed martial arts have recently provided a few female athletes with

contexts in which they are rewarded for doing violence, but most women fighters do not feel that doing violence in their sport makes them more of a woman than females who are not fighters.

Offenses ranged from harassment to rape, nearly all involved heterosexual male coaches victimizing girls, and about 60 percent of these coaches

continued to coach or teach after the misconduct was known. Even though 159 coaches were fired or reprimanded, most reports of misconduct were neither investigated by school authorities nor reported to the police. Even when misconduct was admitted, the incidents were kept secret if the coaches agreed to leave their jobs. Sexual offenses in private sport clubs were especially problematic because clubs seldom regulate coaches' conduct, and most parents trust coaches even when evidence arouses suspicions of misconduct

violence is a bigger problem today than in the past, that coercive tactics should be used to

control unruly fans, and that there is a general decline of civility among fans and in society as a whole. Some spectators are obnoxious and violent today, and they present law enforcement challenges and interfere with the enjoyment of other fans, but there is no systematic evidence that this is a problem out of control.

The experience of dealing with the physicality of contact sports and facing its consequences..

creates drama, excitement, strong emotions, and special interpersonal bonds among female athletes just as it does among males.

At the same time, school districts, college football conferences and athletic departments, and other sport organizations that sponsor football teams and programs are facing a major

crisis as nearly all insurance companies are refusing to cover damages related to head injuries in collision sports. The risk analysts at the insurance companies have studied the research on these injuries and decided that the findings are valid and reliable. Therefore, the companies refuse to accept liability for future claims.

Depending on the circumstances, these confrontations may involve or precipitate collective violence that can be

deadly for people in the stadium. Examples of this have occurred recently in Serbia, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, and in North African countries where rebels have opposed the rule of oppressive political regimes.

She added that in some other countries, where there is less resistance to government involvement in sports, federal governments have created top-down national oversight systems to deal forcefully with these issues, and in most cases, they are at least a

decade ahead of the United States in protecting young people in sports.

Although coaches today don't use such vivid vocabulary athletes usually know what their coaches and teammates expect when it comes to being...

dedicated to the game and not letting the fear of injury reduce the physicality of their actions on the field. Even when they are concerned about the risks associated with brutal body contact and borderline violence, they generally accept and may use these forms of violence to enhance their status on a team, their identities as athletes, and their popularity among spectators.

Overall, historical research shows that sports are given

different meanings at different times and places and that we can understand violence in sports only when we analyze it in relation to the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which it occurs.

Without this understanding, the preventive efforts of teams and organizations may not be effective. Obtaining valid and reliable data on sexual assault and sexual violence perpetrated by male athletes is

difficult. Efforts to collect statistics for professional and high school athletes are scarce, although there are stories and studies that have focused on specific cases. Colleges, however, have campus police and judicial affairs and Title IX offices that do collect data. The data don't account for underreporting and may not include actions that occur away from campus and local police.

Female athletes who engage in violence

do not receive the same support and rewards that men receive—unless they wrestle in the WWE, fight in mixed martial arts, or skate on a roller derby team where the sport personas of female athletes are constructed, in part, to shock or titillate spectators

In most cases, violence involves actions taken to...

dominate, control, or intimidate others. When this occurs, it is connected with the dynamics of power in relationships between individuals, groups, or societies. This is why we refer to domestic violence between family members, gang violence between rival groups, and collective violence between large groups or countries seeking control over territory, material resources, or the lives of people defined as a threat.

Local police usually anticipate celebratory crowds around a stadium, but

effective control in an entire metro region depends on advance planning and having a requisite number of specially trained officers who can intervene without creating backlash in a crowd.

In fact, it has been used as a guide to develop more

effective policing strategies in connection with sport crowds worldwide.

However, combat sports and heavy contact sports often

emphasize hostility, physical domination, and a willingness to use one's body as a weapon. This is consistent with research showing that sport participation, especially for young men in contact sports, is associated with violence and fighting off the field

Football players and athletes in other collision and contact sports

engaged in violence on the field long before television coverage and the promise of big salaries.

mixed martial arts (MMA) as represented by the UFC—Ultimate Fighting Championship—has become a rapidly growing media spectator sport in the United States because

enough people are willing to participate in it and pay to watch it. UFC event tickets sell out, largely to an under-forty male crowd at an average of more than $200 per seat, and they also generate millions of dollars for pay-per-view subscriptions to events.

Additionally, such violence would be difficult to initiate, given that spectators are closely "policed" when

entering venues, making it rare for them to possess objects that could be used to destroy property or harm others.

Most people watch sports on television in their homes. They may express emotions and become angry at certain points, but we don't know much about when and why people

express anger through violence directed at friends and family members at home. Nor do we know much about violence among people who watch televised sports in public settings such as bars, pubs, and around large video screens in public areas.

In the meantime, about 5000 former NFL players and family members sued the NFL in 2012 for

failing to inform them of what the league knew about concussions and their impact on players' health. The NFL settled out of court with the plaintiffs in late-2013, agreeing to pay $765 million, an amount that will increase to an estimate $2 billion as additional claims are approved.

The frequency and publicity given to sexual assault and violence by male athletes combined with the fact that the

female victims of these assaults are often subject to character assassination and harassment indicates that there is a need for sport teams and organizations to directly and assertively address this issue. But there's also a need to understand the factors that influence violent off-the-field actions.

Although scholars in England studied and developed theories about violence at sport events during the 1970s and 1980s,

few studies have been published after 1990, and almost no systematic research has been published in the United States apart from work done by sociologist Jerry Lewis (2007). The research done in England provides valuable historical data and thoughtful analyses of the complex social processes in which particular forms of sport violence are located

Sociologist Derek Kreager analyzed data from a national sample of 6,397 seventh- to twelfth-graders and found that

football players and wrestlers were over 40 percent more likely to be involved in fights than male peers who didn't play high school sports.

During the 1950s and 1960s, high school basketball and football games in some US cities were sites

for local youth gang wars. Gang members and a few students used chains, switchblade knives, brass knuckles, and tire irons to attack each other. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, some high school games in Chicago were closed to the public and played early on Saturday mornings because the regularly scheduled games had become occasions for crowd violence, much of it related to racial and ethnic tensions in the city.

This newspaper account also reports that when the Cubs scored six runs in the sixth inning of the first game,

guns were fired around the stadium to the point that gun smoke made it difficult to see the field. When the Cubs tied the score in the ninth inning, fans again fired guns, and hundreds of them shot holes in the roof of the grandstand, causing splinters to fly onto their heads. As the game remained tied during three extra innings, fans pounded the seats with the butts of their guns and fired in unison every time the Phillies' pitcher began his windup to throw a pitch. It rattled him so much that the Cubs scored on a wild pitch. After the score, a vocal and heavily armed Cubs fan stood up and shouted, "Load! Load at will! Fire!" Fans around the stadium emptied the rest of their ammunition in a final explosive volley.

Sociologist Kevin Young (2019)

has noted that this classification of sport violence is useful but that the lines separating the four types of violence shift over time as norms change in sports and societies.

Consequently, researchers are now investigating techniques for

identifying brain damage among current athletes, the conditions under which damage is most likely to occur, who is the most susceptible to damage, the ways that damage can be minimized in various sports, and the best treatments for damage from past head trauma.

We could take money away from athletes tomorrow, but violence would be reduced only

if there were changes in the culture in which athletes, especially male athletes, learn to value and do violence on the field.

Highly publicized cases in which male athletes are accused or convicted of assault, sexual assault, rape, and gang rape, create the

impression that on-the-field violence influences off-the-field actions and relationships, especially relationships with women.

Violent athletes in the past were paid very little, and athletes..

in high schools, colleges, and sport clubs today are paid nothing, yet they may engage in violence despite the pain and injuries associated with it.

Additional investigations in the United States have documented or reviewed allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by coaches and officials in NGBs

including diving, taekwondo, figure skating, speed skating, weight lifting, equestrian sports, the Paralympics, and others (Reid, 2018b). Some of these remain ongoing (in 2020). Safe Sport, created in 2012, did nothing until 2016, and even then it was and remains slow to react, slow to investigate, and hesitant to impose punishments—an approach influenced by its close ties to the USOC and the reticence of the USOC and all 49 NGBs to police themselves. Additionally, the USOC has underfunded Safe Sport and presents it mostly as a brand to pacify parents so they would continue to pay for their children to participate in "USOC programs" (Moskovitz, 2018).

Although some people said that the culture of football was to blame, a closer look at the situation indicates that many factors were involved,

including the place and meaning of high school football in Steubenville; the culture of the town itself; the prevailing local attitudes and beliefs about gender and women who are sexually assaulted; the characteristics and actions of the football coach and other school officials; the social organization of the high school; the separation between the football team and the rest of the community; the hubris, sense of privilege, and powerful group dynamics associated with the bonds between the football players; the use of alcohol by adolescents and a failure of young people at the parties to take responsibility for the safety of the young woman who had too much to drink; and the irresponsible choices of the two young men charged and found guilty in the case.

Most important for the future of football is the fact that parents are

increasingly concerned about the safety of their children. These concerns are associated with a significant recent decline in football participation among young people

Another "terrorist" (according to the START Report) attack occurred during a 1994 marathon in Bahrain (in the Persian Gulf) when a few runners were

injured by men who allegedly objected to the proximity of the race course to the remains of a mosque and were offended by the shorts and tops worn by female runners. A terrorist attack also occurred in 2006 at a marathon in Lahore, Pakistan, where six buses were burned and four people were injured, including two police officers. The most recent terrorist incident at a marathon prior to the 2013 Boston Marathon was a 2008 suicide bomb attack in Colombo, Sri Lanka, that killed twelve runners and three spectators and injured about 100 others close to the starting line.

Athletes in heavy-contact sports often learn to use

intimidation, aggression, and violence as strategies to achieve competitive success. They routinely disapprove of quasi-criminal and criminal violence, but accept brutal body contact and borderline violence as long as it occurs within the rules of the game. They may not intend to hurt anyone, but this does not prevent them putting their bodies and the bodies of opponents in harm's way.

CTE

is a neurodegenerative disease similar to early-onset dementia. Symptoms include cognitive impairment related to memory, reasoning, language and communication, problem solving, emotional control, and the ability to focus and pay attention. Evidence of CTE has been found in football players from high school through retired professional players as well as boxers, hockey players, and professional soccer players.

Terrorism

is a special form of violence designed to intimidate a target population of people for the purpose of achieving political or social goals. It can occur anywhere, but it occurs most frequently in divided societies and situations where an oppressed population has an oppositional political agenda. In most cases, it is a strategic response to political repression and feelings of frustration, indignation, and anger (Turk, 2004).

When people refer to statistical correlations that show a relationship between playing certain sports and high rates of violence off the field,

it does not prove that playing violent sports causes people to be violent outside of sports. Two other issues must be considered before this conclusion can be made.

Although the brain is complex and there is much more to learn about head trauma and brain injury in sports,

it is clear that the head hits that occur regularly in football can cause brain damage. This scientific fact has the potential to dramatically alter the sports landscape in the United States.

When women do violence in sports....

it may be also seen as a sign of commitment or skill, but it is not seen as proof of femininity. Dominant gender ideology in many cultures links manhood with the ability to do violence, but there is no similar link between womanhood and violence.

When violence occurs in connection with the widespread rejection of norms,...

it may be described as anarchy or lawlessness. When it occurs in connection with extreme methods of social control or extreme overconformity to norms, it may be defined as morally righteous, even when people are maimed or killed and property is destroyed.

the two terrorists directly responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings chose the event because

it occurred on Patriots Day in Massachusetts and is symbolically linked with the beginning of the American Revolution and the formation of the United States. Also, the marathon is televised live and covered worldwide as a premier sports event. Therefore, news of a terrorist attack at the race would be communicated nationally and globally, and it would be linked to the very foundation of social order in the United States.

However, when violence occurs in connection with enforcing norms or protecting people and property....

it often is approved and even lauded as necessary to preserve order, reaffirm social values, or achieve important goals.

To say that commericalization motivates violence among athletes is..

less accurate than to say that commercialization enables people—mostly men—to play sports in which these experiences are available. Of course, being paid to play a violent sport is not irrelevant, but money is seldom the primary factor that drives the participation of these athletes. For many of them, it may be the anticipation of violence that gives their lives significance.

In other words, there is a combination of background and situational factors that influence the

likelihood of spectator violence at a sports event.

Venues and the spaces around them should be safe and organized to enable spectators to move around while

limiting contact between hostile fans of opposing teams. Exits should be accessible and clearly marked, and spectators should not be herded like animals before or after games. Encouraging attendance by families is important in lowering the incidence of violence.

Early forms of competitive sports were only...

loosely governed by rules, and they produced injuries and deaths at rates that would shock people today.

in England during the 1970s and 1980s, young men who came from generations of loyal supporters of their local soccer clubs were alienated and angry when club administrators used new business models and

made decisions that ignored the customs and preferences of fans. As they experienced high rates of unemployment and felt that the local and national governments were undermining their way of life, spectators used soccer matches as sites to express their feelings and confront opposing fans and the police in ways that they saw as reaffirming their identities as men. More recently, when so-called "hooligans" stand up against injustices and confront rival supporters, other spectators may understand their actions even though they morally object to their violence.

The studies that have been done using the best available data consistently indicate that

male college athletes are more often involved than other male students when there are reported charges of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and sexual and domestic violence. The statistics for male athletes are similar to statistics for men in fraternities. There is some indication that this pattern prevails at colleges across all divisions and sizes, and it may also apply to men who play on all-male teams in certain intramural sports

Playing basketball and baseball were unrelated to fighting, and

male tennis players had a 35 percent lower risk of fighting than male peers who didn't play sports. The likelihood of fighting also increased with the proportion of football players in a young man's friendship network.

violent images and words are often used to promote sport events because

many marketing people believe that spectators are drawn to events involving violence—or at least the anticipation of it. This also is why some athletes create personas around narratives stressing their willingness to engage in brutal body contact and borderline violence. They want to attract fans who look up to athletes willing to put their bodies on the line for the sake of winning bouts, matches, or games.

It is difficult for people to critically examine the definitions of

masculinity and the structure of gender relations that they have long accepted as part of the "natural" order of things. But such critiques are needed if we wish to understand and control violence in sports.

Additionally, there is no practical method for recognizing subconcussive head hits that over time

may be causing more brain damage in some athletes than multiple concussions. If football players wore high tech helmets that recorded those hits, they would cost so much that only the NFL could afford them, and they may be afraid of what the data would indicate.

it is rare for them to link toughness, physicality, and aggression to what it

means to be a woman in society. Similarly, coaches don't try to motivate female athletes by urging them to "go out and prove who the better woman is" on the field, even though they might urge women to play assertively. Therefore, at this time, women's contact sports are less violent than men's contact sports.

As women compete at higher levels, they often become similar to

men in how they embrace the sport ethic and use it to frame their identities as athletes. Like men, they are willing to dedicate themselves to the game, take risks, make sacrifices, pay the price, continue playing despite pain and injury, and overcome barriers in pursuit of their dreams.

Sociologist Eric Dunning (1999) notes that violence remains a crucial social issue because the goal of...

modern sports is to create tension rather than eliminate it.

When explaining a reduction of spectator violence at soccer venues in the United Kingdom, British sociologists Cleland and Cashmore (2016) report that it is due to

more effective policing, improvement in stadium design, alcohol bans, the use of surveillance cameras, and increased ticket prices that limit attendance by spectators whose primary goal is to use violence to express anger and feelings of alienation. But the long term goal is to shape spectator norms and create effective and humane methods of social control.

As we learn more about the damage done to the bodies and lives of athletes who engage in violence on the field,

more people will raise moral questions about being entertained by actions that maim, cause lifelong chronic pain, and permanently disable the entertainers. But will people refuse to pay for tickets and media access to the point that football and other violent sports become cultural sideshows rather than part of mainstream US culture? At this point we don't know the answer to this question, but people ask it more frequently

Shaping norms can be difficult, but it's a more effective strategy than

moving games to remote locations, hiring hundreds of security personnel, patrolling the stands, using surveillance cameras, scheduling games at times when crowds will be sparse, and recruiting police and soldiers to brandish automatic weapons. Of course, some of these tactics can be effective, but they should be last resorts or temporary measures used only during the time it takes to develop new spectator norms.

Additionally, the process of doing and enduring violence for the sake of the game creates special bonds of...

mutual respect between athletes. These bonds anchor and reaffirm their indentities and infuse special meaning into their lives.

Referees also could meet with both teams before the event and explain the

need to leave hostilities in the locker rooms. Team officials could organize pregame unity rituals involving an exchange of team symbols and displays of respect between opponents. These rituals could be covered by the media so that fans could see that athletes do not view their opponents as enemies. But these strategies conflict with commercial media interests in hyping games as wars without weapons; therefore, we're faced with a choice: promote the safety of fans and players or boost media profits and gate receipts for team owners.

One of the most important preventive measures is to know and respect the

needs and rights of spectators. This requires that crowd-control officials be trained to intervene in potentially disruptive situations without escalating the violence. Alcohol consumption should be regulated realistically, as done in many venues worldwide.

In the agreement, the NFL admitted to

no liability for players' problems and the league was allowed to keep secret all its research evidence on concussions.

However, in the wake of injuries and mounting property damage associated with these incidents, stadium security officials

now prevent fans from rushing onto the playing field when games end (Renfrow et al., 2016). Cases of celebratory violence still occur, but new methods of social control have been reasonably successful in preventing them inside the stadium. But it is a slightly different story outside the stadium, where crowds gather in multiple locations.

However, most security measures are discreet and take place behind the scenes in the form

of bomb searches, electronic surveillance, and undercover tactics. When terrorist attacks don't occur, those who support high-tech social control say their system is working; and if a terrorist attack does occur, they argue that even more security technology is needed. In either case, those profiting from fear and uncertainty win.

Research in the sociology of sport indicates that fan cultures in certain regions are organized around nationalist affiliations and feelings, and these are regularly fused with various forms

of racism, depending on which populations are perceived as threats or the cause of social and political problems. But nationalism and racism are never limited to stadium crowds alone. They are manifestations of realities in the larger community or society. Inside the stadium they become concentrated and magnified to the point that they cannot be dismissed or ignored.

In fact, until the 2013 Boston Marathon, the attack during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was the

only sport-related incident of terrorism in US history. But then came September 11, 2001, and the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a hijacked plane that ultimately crashed in Pennsylvania. Over 3000 people were killed and thousands were wounded on that day. The pervasive fear generated by 9/11 and the emerging narratives that imagined future terrorist attacks in vivid details have had a major impact on US culture and on major sport events.

if a gender hierarchy were truly fixed in nature, there would be no need

or sports to reaffirm "natural" differences between men and women. Gender would simply exist without spending so much time and effort teaching girls and boys how they should perform it. Power and performance sports are used as valuable aids in this teaching and learning process, and the men who play them serve as models of manhood in many countries.

Violence reinforces feelings of self-worth by eliciting acceptance from

other athletes. Willingly facing violence and playing in pain honors the importance of the game and expresses dedication to teammates and the culture of high-performance sport.

Nancy Theberge (1999)

pent a full season studying the experiences of women on an elite ice hockey team in Canada, she discovered that the women were drawn to the physicality of hockey, even though body checking was not allowed.

Power and performance sports emphasize sex difference in terms of

physical strength, control through domination, and status as a reward for physical conquests. The gender ideology formed around these ideas and beliefs has been central in many cultures. The stakes associated with preserving this ideology are so high that male boxers are paid millions of dollars for three to thirty-six minutes of brutalizing one another in the ring. Heavyweight boxers are among the highest-paid athletes in the world because they promote the idea two men facing each other in a violent confrontation is "nature in action," even though the combatants often lose millions of brain cells as they "prove" male superiority.

The WHO definition states that violence can be

physical, sexual, psychological, or involve deprivation or neglect. In all cases, it consists of actions that cause or are likely to cause some form of harm to self or others, even when there is not an explicit intent to do harm.

Many people resist the notion that cultural changes are needed to control violence because it

places the responsibility for change on all of us. It is easy to blame violence on wealthy and greedy team owners, athletes without moral character, and TV executives seeking higher viewer ratings, but it is more difficult to critically examine our culture and the normative and social organization of the sports that many people watch and enjoy.

Another factor that has boosted security expenses for the Olympics and other sports mega-events is that

police and political officials in host cities use the fears of local citizens to buy and install security systems and employ a militaristic command-and-control approach to policing that most people would find unacceptable under other circumstances (McMichael, 2012; Schimmel, 2012).

Political leaders, patriots, sport team owners, and media commentators have used sports and sport venues to deliver

political messages that support uncritical forms of nationalism capitalist expansion. As research continues, we will learn more about the complex and contentious forms of fan violence as they occur around the world.

Women's sports increasingly emphasize

power and performance, and they have higher stakes associated with success. As women become increasingly immersed in the social world of elite power and performance sports, they become more tolerant of rule violations and aggressive actions on the playing field, but this pattern is less clear among women than it is among men.

Violent sports generally serve to reproduce an ideology that naturalizes the

power of men over women.

As a result, the Salt Lake City Olympics and all subsequent Olympic Games have been assumed to be

prime terrorist targets, leading organizers to spend increasing amounts of money for security. To question this assumption is nearly impossible in a climate of fear fueled in part by companies wanting to profit from the sales of high-priced security products (Graham, 2012). Most fans believe that sport venues are an inevitable target of terrorists, and they are willing to sacrifice personal privacy in order to feel safe at events

In the case of sports,

punching a referee who penalizes you is violence that involves a rejection of norms. It is defined as illegal and punished by teams and sport organizations. However, it is different when a football player delivers a punishing tackle, breaking the ribs or blowing out the knee of an opponent. Such violence helps to achieve a valued goal and is seen as acceptable, highlighted on video replays, and used by teammates and other players as a mark of one's status in football culture.

However, sports violence is real, and it causes

real pain, injury, disability, and death, although these negative consequences are usually hidden from spectators.

In sociology, we try to define concepts in ways that...

reflect the times and places in which they will be used to identify and study particular aspects of social reality.

Growing awareness of research findings that identify the consequences of violence in sports has led the US Congress, about half of all state legislatures, and many sport organizations to develop

regulations and protocols to protect young people who play sports—especially those in which there is a possibility for sustaining concussions and regular head trauma. These consist of rules about reporting concussions, dealing with them during events, and treating athletes who have experienced concussions.

The pressure cooker bombs used in Boston killed three people and injured 264, some seriously enough to

require limb amputations. But the effects this terrorist act went far beyond Boston and marathons.

The use of social media by people in or around a collection of fans who engage in violence to celebrate a victory can aid in identifying and arresting perpetrators of violence, but

research is needed to determine whether social media deter violence or fuel it among those who want digital evidence of their celebrations. In the meantime, some cities are using strategically placed surveillance cameras to capture images of perpetrators.

At one point during a game in the 2019 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, Tom Izzo,the well-known coach of Michigan State University, had to be

restrained by one of his players. Izzo had called a time-out and was furious with a player—a 19-year-old first-year student from Indiana. He was screaming and pointing a finger into the player's chest. Izzo turned back to the team huddle but quickly returned to berating and humiliating the 19-year old. As he lunged toward the player, a team member came between them to protect his teammate.

Information on violence among girls and women in contact sports remains

scarce even though more women are participating in them. Participation in collision and heavy-contact sports creates the possibility for violence among female athletes, but few studies explore when and why it occurs.

Additionally, the stadium, with the help of media coverage and the use of social media, enables them to be

seen and heard so that the entire community or nation will know that they exist and are a force to be taken seriously.

what we know is that sport events do not occur in social vacuums, and when tensions and conflicts are intense and widespread in a community or society, sport events may become

sites for confrontations. . For example, past spectator violence in the United States was grounded in racial tensions aggravated by highly publicized rivalries between high schools whose students come from different racial or ethnic backgrounds (Guttmann, 1986). In cities where housing segregation created heavily segregated schools, racial and ethnic conflicts contributed to confrontations before, during, and after games.

Athletes are public figures and may be celebrities,

so when they are accused and arrested, we hear and read about it multiple times. This repetition also creates the impression that male athletes are more violent and misogynist than other men.

Violence in sports comes in multiple forms, and it is grounded in...

social and cultural factors related to the sport ethic, commercialization, ideas about masculinity, and strategies used in sports.

The meaning of violence is....

socially constructed. Definitions vary from one person and society to the next.

Media reports of violent actions at sport events have increased our awareness of crowd violence. However, crowd violence is as old as spectator sports. Data documenting the actions of sport spectators through the ages are scarce, but research suggests that

spectator violence occurred relatively often in the past and much of it would make crowd violence today seem rare and tame by comparison

In North America, the most destructive episodes of violence occur in riots after

sports events or in fan gathering places outside a sport venue. This is most common at events for which the stakes are high, such as playoff and championship games. Celebratory riots occur among fans of victorious teams, whereas frustration riots occur among fans of teams suffering defeats. But both forms of riots are equally destructive to property, although loss of life is rare.

Wright and Fitzpatrick (2006) found that certain high school sports were associated with

status dynamics that created or intensified ingroup versus outgroup differences among young people. Such differences may also account for more fighting.

French sociologist Loic Wacquant (1992, 1995)

studied these issues for three years as he trained and gained the trust of the men who worked out at a traditional, highly structured, and reputable boxing gym in a Chicago neighborhood. During that time, he observed, interviewed, and documented the experiences and lives of more than fifty professional boxers. He not only learned the craft of boxing but also became immersed in the social world in which the boxers trained. He found that the social world encompassed by this gym was one in which the boxers learned to value their craft and dedicate themselves to the idea of being a professional boxer; they also learned to respect fellow boxers and accept the rules of sportsmanship that governed boxing as a profession.

Over the past forty years, sociologists and law enforcement officials have done a good job of identifying those factors and developing social control strategies that

take them into account. But additional things could be done. For example, we know that when spectators perceive violence on the field, they are more likely to engage in violence in the venue. Therefore, it is not wise to promote sports events as violent confrontations between hostile opponents.

When 9/11 occurred, Salt Lake City was preparing for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. This led some people—all with different motives—to focus on

the Salt Lake Games as the frontline for a possible global war on terror. Large security companies and other companies with security technologies to sell were influential in creating and promoting a new narrative of fear and the need for event organizers to provide comprehensive security no matter the cost

A father in New York explains that his ten-year-old son is an avid fan of UFC because

the fighters "are the new superheroes for kids. It's just given them a whole new set of idols" (Quenqua, 2012). According to Joe Rogan, an MMA commentator, the UFC has become popular because people "enjoy violence, especially when it's in a controlled environment" (Bearak, 2011).

As one insurance company executive stated, "If you're football, hockey or soccer,

the insurance business doesn't want you".At the same time, executives from sports organizations claim that organized sports cannot exist unless they have insurance protecting them from personal and organizational liability. More than any issue today, this could change the way sports are played in the United States initially, and then worldwide.

Although many women are committed to controlling brutal body contact and more severe forms of violence,...

the love of their sport and the excitement of physicality can lead to violence on the field.

These two players talked for 2 hours about "torment they both endured:

the public and private humiliations, the degrading outbursts, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse, the cursing,the yelling, the screaming, the insults, the attempt to completely break them down"Each of them noted that they could not tell anyone about this abuse because everyone thought that Knight, with a notable winning record, was the perfect coach. Each of them also transferred to other universities and required therapy to come to terms with how Knight had damaged them. To make matters worse, they were criticized by people they didn't know for being too soft and weak to play for Knight.

For some young men, MMA represents the same things that "boxing once did for their fathers and grandfathers:

the ultimate measure of manhood, endurance and guts" (Quenqua, 2012).

These rules and guidelines are certainly needed, but they are useful only if parents, coaches, and people in sport management know about and understand...

them and if concussions are either reported by players or diagnosed by qualified medical personnel (Kim et al., 2018; Sarmiento et al., 2019). However, parents and coaches often do not know about them or understand why they exist, and many athletes, especially males in power-and-performance sports, continue to take pride in not disclosing such injuries or they fear that if they do report them they won't be allowed to play a sport that is important to them (Dean, 2019).

many people who criticize sports claim that if athletes were true amateurs and played for love of the game instead of money,

there would be less violence. But this conclusion contradicts research findings, and it distracts attention from the deep cultural and ideological roots of violence in particular sports and societies

In a low-income neighborhood where poverty and hopelessness promoted intimidation and violence,

these boxers accepted norms that disapproved of fighting outside the ring, they avoided street fights, and they internalized the controls necessary to follow a highly disciplined daily training schedule.

This violent outburst occurred in front of a nearly full stadium with millions of people watching on television. But the players on the MSU team did not appear to be shocked, as if

they had seen it before and come to accept it as Izzo just doing what he does. As Etan Thomas, aformer college and NBA basketball player watched this, he was reminded of a conversation he had with friends who had played at Indiana University when legendary Bobby Knight was the coach (Thomas, 2019).

It is important to understand that such violent expression of deviant overconformity to the norm sof the sport ethic are not limited to men, even...

though they are more common among male than female athletes. Women also overconform to the norms of the sport ethic, and when they play contact sports, they face the challenge of drawing the line between assertive physicality and violence.

The classifications by Smith failed

to address the origins of violence and the relationship of violent acts to the sport ethic, gender ideology, and the commercialization of sports. Despite these weaknesses, these four categories help us understand the distinctions that people make between various types of violence in sports.

Therefore, violence may be

tolerated or even glorified when police are perceived to be enforcing the law, when soldiers are protecting the homeland or when athletes are perceived to be pursuing victories in the name of others.

Bearbaiting, cockfighting, dog fighting, bull fighting, and other "sporting" activities during those period involved...

treatment of animals that many people today would define as criminal violence

The high school football team in Steubenville, Ohio, received national news coverage when....

two high-profile team members were found guilty of raping an unconscious young woman, whom they repeatedly and brutally dehumanized at parties attended by their teammates.

The only other terrorist incident at the Olympics occurred at the 1996 Atlanta Games when a former US military explosives expert detonated several bombs that killed

two people and injured over 100 to protest against abortion and the "global socialism" that he thought was destroying the United States.

Sport venues

usually soccer stadiums—for these men are places where they have more freedom and opportunities to express themselves collectively than they do on the streets.

Adubato's study was in one city and for two NFL seasons. Her findings suggest that the

verbal and visual content of NFL games and the meaning they are given by some men may be a factor in some domestic violence cases. However, we need additional studies to substantiate this connection and determine its policy and policing implications. We know that the roots of domestic violence run deep, so we should not rush to judgment on NFL football broadcasts as a cause. Furthermore, we don't know enough about the ways that spectators integrate media sport content into their lives to say that watching sports does anything except provide emotionally focused social occasions.

In many societies, participation in power and performance sports has become an important

way to prove masculinity. Boys discover that if they play these sports and others see them as being able to do violence, they can avoid social labels such as pussy, girl, fag, wimp, and sissy. This learning begins in youth sports, and by the time young men have become immersed in the social world of most power and performance sports, they accept brutal body contact and borderline violence as part of the game as it is played by "real" men.

Some athletes in power and performance sports are paid....

well for their willingness and ability to do violence on the field. However, it would be inaccurate to identify money as the sole cause of violence in sports.

Research indicates that, as part of an overall civilizing process in Europe and North America, modern sports were...

were developed to be more rule-governed activities than the physical games in previous eras.

As you know by now, making sense of what people think, do, and say requires that we understand the context in

which people live and give meaning to the reality around them. Therefore, it is not surprising that people give different meanings to their identities as sport fans, the teams they support, and the purpose of attending games and matches (Wann and James, 2019). As a result, venue violence occurs in different forms and for different reasons from one country and cultural region to another

It is difficult to make general descriptions or conclusions about venue violence worldwide. But web or YouTube searches for "football ultras," "ultras worldwide," "ultras-tifo," and "football pyro," will

will provide images of how fans express themselves around the world. In some cases you will see young men behaving badly as they engage in seriously dangerous pyro displays or express chauvinism, racism, sexism, and homophobia (Kossakowski, Antonowicz & Jakubowska, 2020).

Future research may clarify the influence of these and other factors, and help to explain why none of the young people witnessing this and similar assaults was

willing to step in and why men in certain all-male groups appear to lose concern and respect for women to the point of raping them and making fun of the rape. But research on male athletes should not obscure the fact that violence against women is not simply a "sport problem," that most of that violence is perpetrated by heterosexual men who do not play sports, and that our understanding of it must take into account factors in the larger culture

In boxing, football, ice hockey, rugby, and other heavy-contact sports, athletes also use their

willingness to engage in violence to promote their careers, increase drama for spectators, and enhance publicity for themselves along with their sports and sponsors.

Current studies are investigating the incidence and consequences of concussions in

youth sports and football at all levels of participation