Fans need to lament in peace

Have you heard that riot police will be on standby after the Pro Bowl this weekend? No, not in Honolulu; in Oakland, home of the Oakland Rioters. If there�s a football game, Raiders fans are ready to smash a few windows, burn a car or two, maybe even pelt a few policemen with rocks and sticks.

Does that sound ludicrous to you? Maybe a few weeks ago it did, but not anymore. The Raiders beat the Titans in the AFC Championship game, and the fans wreak havoc. Oakland loses the Super Bowl, and the Rioters fans cut loose again. It doesn�t matter if you win or lose, it�s how you plunder the business district.

This whole post-game celebration thing has gotten out of hand. College fans storm the field and rip down the goalpost even after nondescript victories over floundering opponents. The entire ritual has been rendered meaningless. Ohio State fans burned cars and looted stores after beating Michigan in November. Fortunately for all involved, that doesn�t happen very often.

But the Rioters have taken this to a new depth. �We was robbed� is no longer a complaint about officiating; it�s part of the after game police report. It seemed silly enough Oakland fans went on a rampage when they won the AFC title, but like Ohio State, it had been so long, maybe they�d forgotten how to have a proper celebration. But to burn cars and loot stores because your team lost, and lost badly, in the Super Bowl is disturbing. One can only hope it wasn�t the Rioters real fans; just some thugs using the game as an excuse.

If you have observed the paying patrons in Oakland�s �Black Hole� you know that there is a better than average chance that the thugs and the patrons are one and the same. The Rioters have always been loud and proud about their renegade image, and the fans bought into it. It�s hard to imagine a less civil place on a Sunday afternoon.

Rest assured this is not going unnoticed at NFL headquarters. Al Davis and his Rioters are burdens to the buttoned down NFL even on a good day. It is one thing to have vocal, energetic, enthusiastic fans supporting their team. It is entirely another to have walk-by muggings in the stands, verbal abuse that would make a sailor blush and inebriated fans that smash and burn anything in their wake on the way out of the stadium.

The real concern is that this brand of hooliganism is increasing in frequency as well as intensity. It is startlingly pervasive at every level of athletics from the pros right down to T-ball. Fans in the US are becoming every bit the scofflaws British soccer fans have been for decades. As these incidents of anarchy proliferate, the odds of someone being fatally injured increase dramatically.

Perhaps the league should experiment with a recent European ruling. Back in October, Slovakian soccer fans were extremely racist and brutal in their verbal abuse of two black British players. European soccer's governing body, UEFA, has decided that Slovakia's 2004 European Championship qualifier against Liechtenstein on April 2 will be played in an otherwise empty stadium. No fans. None. That should solve the problem.

I don�t think the NFL will find this an acceptable solution, especially if the problem spills over to other cities. However they plan to deal with the problem, they should expedite the discussions and draw up the plans as quickly as possible before people are seriously injured or even killed. Left unchecked, that frightening outcome is just a matter of time.