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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us December 2, 2004 Mayhem in the Motor City: What fueled the fire? By Elon Glucklich Ashland Friday, Nov. 19, was your ordinary day in sports: unranked Santa Clara beat the supposedly mighty third ranked North Carolina Tar Heels in men's college basketball. Dwyane Wade's buzzer-beating shot in overtime elevated the Miami Heat over the Utah Jazz. And some of college football's greatest rivalries were only a day away. So why did a 15-point victory by the Detroit Pistons over the Indiana Pacers dominate the headlines like a Jennifer Lopez wedding? By now the story is familiar: an un-extraordinary scuffle between Pistons' Ben Wallace and Pacers' Ron Artest took a turn for the horrific when the unusually relaxed Artest sprang several rows into the stands and began pummeling a fan after being struck in the face by a flying beverage. The next 15 minutes saw players in the stands (some peace-makers, others instigators), fans on the court, beer in the air - it seemed as if nothing was where it was supposed to be. We're now in the aftermath of what has been regarded as the worst instance of on (and off) court violence since players on the losing team were sacrificed to the gods in Chinese folklore. Suspensions have been handed out by NBA commissioner David Stern, who clearly took this opportunity to send a strict message to the NBA's athletes. Ron Artest's season is over; Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O'Neil are out 30 and 25 games, respectively, and Indiana - a team thought to be contending for the title this season - has been reduced to merely finding enough players to put a team on the court. Hours of dissecting every single aspect of the brawl. But, the many basketball analysts have yet to brush the surface of the real culprit behind this and just about every other similar sports-related incident. It's not the testosterone-driven passion of fans caught up in the emotion of a pennant race, nor is it the unruly behavior of the games' "bad boys." The answer can be found in 16 or 24 oz. bottles at any football, basketball, baseball, or hockey arena in the country. America's favorite cold beverage - killing brain cells quicker than it takes a college frat boy to yell "beer me!" - gives every sporting event serving alcohol the basic fuel needed to trigger an event similar to what we saw on Friday. The recipe is simple (one part rivalry game + 1 part rout by visiting team + thousands of disappointed fans x number of beers consumed per fan). Add one scuffle near the end of the game (as was the case on Friday) and suddenly every middle-aged, overweight fan thinks he is Buster Douglas about to fight Mike Tyson. Alcohol so distorts the reality that these guys are itching to get their hands on professional athletes whose job it is to be in peak physical condition. I happened to be in attendance at last year's football game between the Green Bay Packers and Oakland Raiders, and I witnessed for the most part a complete lack of moral decency toward Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who, only a day earlier lost his father to a heart attack. All around me, people would leave their seats, only to return, arms wrapped around numerous beers as if they were holding a new-born child. They consumed more and more beer, their words becoming more and more threatening, and I (being a Packers fan and fearing for my safety) quickly thought better of donning my Brett Favre jersey, opting instead to keep it hidden in my jacket. So as the dust settles and the cloud of uncertainty clears, the Pistons have to be at least slightly pleased with the outcome. Their main rival's championship hopes have been severely dashed, while they escape with no more than a six game suspension for Ben Wallace and several one game suspensions. But how do you discourage such fan violence from repeating itself? Europe has the answer. In European soccer leagues leagues, teams whose fan conduct exceeds the lines of decency are stripped of several home games, instead playing those games on a neutral field without any fans in attendance. Only an unprecedented action however, would ensure that an incident like this never happens again - the immediate discontinuance of alcohol sales at sporting events. Unfortunately, stadiums make far too much money from beer sales to even consider taking such drastic action, even with their fan's wellbeing at stake. I guess you really can put a price on our safety. Elon Glucklich is a 17-year-old living in Ashland. 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