Was It Like This in Rome at the Decline?

Winnipeg Free Press (December 27, 2007)

Author: Meyer, Dick

Linked as:

Summary

I suppose depravity is a strong word. But what better describes drunken adult men, egged on by other grown beer-swillers, belly-shouting the most spectacular obscenities imaginable as they stand next to a 13-year-old boy? Every play was a competition to produce a more vile insult or a different suggestion about which Bear body part might be stuffed up which orifice. When the Redskins scored their first touchdown, four young women -- I'm guessing they were in high school -- turned around and did a little stripper's dance that made my son blush as I cringed. Even putting aside their ages, it was too cold to bare flesh. Within 10 minutes of kickoff, I knew I had made a terrible mistake taking my son to the game.

There is nothing unique about Redskins fans in my experience. I took my son to a game at Chicago's field a few years ago, and it may have been worse, simply because it wasn't so cold out that day. I thought that experience might have been an anomaly, but the friends I have surveyed tell me it isn't. When I went to a Cleveland Browns game without my son, I wasn't as disturbed by the drunken meanness, but there was still plenty of drunken name-calling.