{"id":1236,"date":"2006-08-07T16:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T16:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yurasko.net\/wfy\/2006\/08\/and-the-crowd-goes-wild-mild.html"},"modified":"2006-08-07T16:54:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T16:54:00","slug":"and-the-crowd-goes-wild-mild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yurasko.net\/wfy\/2006\/08\/and-the-crowd-goes-wild-mild\/","title":{"rendered":"And the crowd goes wild mild"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not a big fan of ESPN Page 2’s Sports Guy<\/b><\/a> Bill Simmons<\/b> (Exhibit A: the recent Papi vs. Bird<\/span><\/a> column), but I read him occasionally. A recent column<\/b><\/a> about picking an English Premier League football team to cheer has elevated my appreciation of him. <\/p>\n

In the column, Simmons decides to follow the EPL because of “Great crowds. There’s nothing like following a sport with fans who know how to make a big game feel even bigger.” It is a great point, the first of many. Read on..<\/p>\n

…European soccer stands out because of the superhuman energy of its fans — the chants and songs, the nonstop cheering, the utter jubilation whenever anything good happens, how the games seem to double as life-or-death experiences — and I can’t help but wonder if that same trait has been sucked out of our own sports for reasons beyond our control…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, just a little<\/span> bit…<\/p>\n

By pricing out most of the common fans and overwhelming the ones who remained, professional sports leagues in this country made a conscious decision: We’d rather hear artificially created noise than genuine noise. That’s the biggest problem with sports in America right now. And there’s no real way to solve it.<\/p>\n

One more note on this: I watch old Celtics games from time to time and always think how the Bird Era could never be recreated — not the team itself, but its connection with the Boston Garden and the passion of the fans attending those games. We didn’t need a Jumbotron or musical prompts to tell us what to do. When the Celts were introduced, we screamed for every starter and saved one extra decibel level for Bird. When we needed a defensive stop, we stood and shouted at the top of our lungs.<\/p>\n

The best moments happened when the C’s would blow someone off the floor and force a timeout, and the roof would practically come off, and we’d keep cheering and cheering — all the way through the timeout, no organ music, no other noise, nothing. That’s how we judged the level of excellence, by how long everyone felt obligated to cheer. If we made it all the way through the timeout, the horn would sound, which only made us cheer louder because we had lasted so long. I’m telling you, there was nothing quite like it. And this happened all the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He is absolutely right, the current generation of fans are so overstimulated that they cannot do anything without being prompted by a big TV or the loudspeakers. The whole experience has been dumbed down. Penn State has gone in that direction too<\/span><\/a>, seemingly past the point of no return.<\/p>\n

©MMX William F. Yurasko<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not a big fan of ESPN Page 2’s Sports Guy Bill Simmons (Exhibit A: the recent Papi vs. Bird column), but I read him occasionally. A recent column about picking an English Premier League football team to cheer has elevated my appreciation of him. In the column, Simmons decides to follow the EPL […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAnd the crowd goes wild mild - William F. 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