I remember growing up listening to my dad tell me a story about a Baylor v Texas A&M basketball game he went to in Waco in the early 1970s. Long story short, a brawl broke out that put the Malice in the Palace to shame. Fans, players, coaches, chairs...bedlam. In 1929, Baylor students at a football game apparently beat a Texas A&M corps member to death.
The two schools involved are the same mostly because I went to Baylor and I had occasion to hear these stories. Common denominator? No TV cameras or internet. I was reminded again of these stories the other day when I was reading an article about Negro Baseball League legend Oscar Charleston who played for the Indianapolis ABCs and other Negro League teams. At one point in the article, an incident incited by Charleston was recounted wherein an entire town essentially devolved into a riotous maelstrom after a brawl on the field was started. I think the year was also 1929, but I'm probably wrong.
If any of these three incidents, and these are by no means the only three or even the three worst, occurred today there would be 24 hour news coverage and countless breathless editorials about the degradation of American society and the rising problem of sports violence. As was mentioned in a previous post, we love sports because they give us a common cause to love and support. In that way, supporting a sports team is a sort of mini-nationalism that appeals to our communal pride. And just like real nationalism, wars and violence often follow. None of this is new, it's just much more easily consumed.
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