Greetings from the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState. Sammy the Shark and Karl the Kraken are hard at work …
Oops, I spelled hardly working wrong.
A long time ago, albeit not in a galaxy far, far away, for several years I was an Oakland Raiders season ticket holder. I finally gave it up when I could no longer tolerate the other people in attendance, as the incessant stream of profanity and such on all sides became too much. I even contacted the front office and changed seats once in the middle of the season to try and get away from some people who took the entire matter way too seriously. While jokes were plentiful — the Oakland Coliseum was the only public sports facility I knew of that had three sets of restrooms: men, women, and cyclops — not being able to enjoy the games as much as they were enjoyable courtesy of the Raiders’ mediocrity year after dismal year grew wearisome.
Being a sports fan can be fun if done correctly. It is when excessive identification with a given team, to be more precise personalization of identification with a specific team, takes place that things can go south in a hurry. There are few things more simultaneously amusing and alarming than when a fan starts referring to their team of choice with “we” as if, by some magic formula, they have direct involvement with the team’s performance. Excessive personalization of identification with a team can lead to some interesting mental gymnastics. My team is a winner; therefore, I’m a winner! My team is a loser; therefore, it’s okay for me to be a loser! And so on.
I said all that to set the stage for one of the more disturbing stories to come out in recent weeks. Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell and family have had to sell their house due to the online publishing of its address, the result being people going there to jeer after the Lions lost in the 2024 NFC championship game to the San Francisco 49ers. Some more details have become known.
Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell and his family were repeatedly targeted by unwanted visitors to their Bloomfield Township home, including in late January when his home address was posted on Snapchat after the team lost the NFC Championship Game, according to police reports obtained by The Detroit News.
The reports help to explain why Campbell listed the home for sale amid security concerns and, earlier this year, moved to a home purchased by a limited liability company, according to public records. The couple “loved” the Bloomfield Township house, but security concerns necessitated the move to somewhere more private, Campbell told Crain’s Detroit Business last week.
The story unfolds this way. Campbell and his wife left their teenage daughter at home while they traveled to California for the game. Shortly after the game, one of the daughter’s classmates thought it would be funny to post the Campbell’s home address on Snapchat. Sure enough, some people saw it and took it upon themselves to drive to the house and yell things. The Campbell’s daughter called her parents, who advised her to leave the house and spend the night elsewhere, which she did, her boyfriend who had been at the house with her in tow. No one attempted to enter or vandalize the house. Still, it’s impossible to miss the inherent danger in such a situation. Someone have one too many brewskis or lose one too many dollars on a bet involving the game … you get the idea.
As mentioned above, sports can be fun. It’s far more fun when your team wins, of course. And yes, ‘tis a bummer when they lose. Still, it is but a game. The 1994 murder of Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar shortly after his accidentally putting the ball into his own net during the World Cup is the most extreme example of what happens when people take things of a sports nature far more personally than they ought. As we have seen twice this year in politics, the unhinged are out there, and at least some are willing to go far beyond the pale. Hopefully, we will not see a similar scenario in sports.
