More Mailbag: LSU-Alabama death edition
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Hunter writes:
What do you make of the LSU / Alabama fan murder on Saturday after the game? At what point would you rely on a quasi-functioning member of society - regardless of consumption - stepping in and saying "Hey, man - Just let it go. You don't ACTUALLY smell like corndogs. There's no need to go over to his house. But if you really need to fight someone, leave the gun at home."
Was the tipping point the LSU fan being reminded of his corndog aroma? Or was it a dig at Les Miles (Saban will always be better)? Did that send him hurtling into some poor decision making (add alcohol, some guns, crazy women)? How many of your sports loving friends can summon a larger firearm in mere moments after being threatened with one? Are these questions you'd never begin to ask yourself? Me either.
This is why grown men shouldn't fight unless they're going to war or their wife or girlfriend or child has just been assaulted. Here's the deal, we all care more than we should about what happens in college football games. That's what makes the SEC the best conference in sports, but it also makes us more willing to get in a fight. If you're over the age of 28 and you've been in a fight in the past year, you need to seriously reexamine your life. Something is going horribly wrong.
My theories on why fans fight to the death:
1. Both people are so dumb no one can win the argument. I've long believed that having a dumb person and a smart person argue is the best possible argument. Because the smart person thinks they won the argument and the dumb person thinks they won. Their minds are so far apart that they can't even penetrate the idiocy or brilliance of each other. So smart people and dumb people don't fight very often. Each believes that they've won the verbal combat.
Generally two smart people don't fight because they realize they have too much to lose. (The same theory proves why it's so much safer to sit in good seats on the road for sporting events than in bad seats. Presumably people who can afford good seats have something to lose and hence behave better. Now this isn't a fail-safe but it's a good, rough barometer. I'm already nervous about my trip to Titans-Lions on Thanksgiving in Detroit. My father-in-law is notoriously cheap so we'll be surrounded by laid-off factory workers from Dearborn who have to come watch the Lions get destroyed by the Titans. Prediction: someone in the bad seats will try and pick a fight with me.)
But two dumb people have nothing to lose and the lunacy of their insults to one another actually stings. "Your gay," hurts them more than it hurts you or me. Sooner or later you got to shoot a man if he says your gay.
2. The poorer you are the bigger a deal geography is to you. Your state and your city is all you know and you hold to both of them dearly. Did you ever give your cellphone number to someone and they were shocked because your area code was different than theirs? There are still an awful lot of people who don't have friends or family that live more than 20 miles from them. This is why Cricket phones still exist. If you don't have friends or family from other regions then it's likely you have a really provincial outlook on your own team. This means the very idea that other fans exist and care as much about their teams is a bit shocking to you. So you're angrier when you get confronted by opposing fans. Note that these murders (I can't believe I'm typing this) don't happen near major metropolitan areas. It's not because people in Nashville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, or New Orleans don't care as much about their teams, it's just that we've already been exposed to lots of other fan bases.
Geography is still a huge deal to many Southerners. Clearly, with my embrace of Pan-Southernism, I'm one of them. But, on the positive side, my geographic region encompasses the entire South. So I'd only be willing to kill people from outside the South who beat my team. But maybe that's just me. It's why I'm typing this from a hunting lodge outside Cody, Wyoming. I'm loading my rifle as we speak. The moment one of those rascals in the 1980's brown W sweater appears, bam, he's dead.
3. It's the economy stupid. People are more on edge about their teams when they don't know where their next paycheck is coming from. Remember when the Pistons brawled with the Pacers in Detroit. That very day the lead story was the largest lay-offs in General Motors history. You think this was a coincidence? It wasn't. But no one really wrote about this because most people who write about sports for a living aren't very smart. Or at least if they are smart they aren't interested in looking past the easy cliche.
My point at that time was that you wouldn't see a riot like this in a Southern town. Why? Because people weren't angry about their standard of living declining. The brawl in the palace was a manifestation of that anger. Same thing now with Alabama and LSU. Both teams are outrageously successful.
4. Owning a gun and being dumb is a bad combination. I don't own a gun. Not because I wasn't raised shooting guns (I'm Southern I was shooting by the time I was 5) but just because I know that statistically I'm much more likely to have my son get that gun and hurt himself than I am to protect him with the gun. My point isn't that guns are bad or that people with guns are idiots, but just that they compound idiotic decisions.
Say this Alabama fan doesn't own a gun and goes hunting the LSU fan with a knife. Do you know how hard it is to kill someone face-to-face with a knife? Of course not. I do, I was in 'Nam. I bayoneted 15 charlies one Friday. People don't like to kill other people face-to-face unless they're crazy. It's the same reason the bayonet was so rarely used in hand-to-hand combat in the Civil War. It humanizes death. Guns dehumanize death. In the South we have more people with guns than anywhere else. We also have more murders per capita. That's not a coincidence.
5. Defending the honor of Les Miles is getting harder and harder. Does anyone else think Les Miles and LSU are on the verge of a epically fast decline? 5-3 in the SEC this season at best--two fifty point blowout losses. I just really feel like we're headed for a downturn in a hurry. This will lead to more murders. Only next year it will be LSU fans killing Alabama fans. Unless that already happened this year. No one can seem to decide who was a fan of who in this incident. Which is the ultimate irony. You die for your team and no one knows who your team is. Labels: alabama lsu murder
Posted by Clay Travis at 2:56 PM
 
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Why Clay Travis may die on Turkey Day
all of your theories on why SEC fans "fight to the death" are on point.
who can argue with point #4 "Owning a gun and being dumb is a bad combination".
however, the true meaning to the theory on all 5 points is pro football in detroit on thanksgiving.
Point #1 "Both people are so dumb no one can win the arguement". This is the town that gave us the Corvair, Skylark, and Fiero car's. That's craptastic.
Point #2 is crafty in the fact that poverty relates to pride. I can sum this point up with one word, Detroit. Which also includes Point #3 "Its the Economy stupid".
All the duct tape in the world (which china now owns) can't put the american auto industry back together, yet our government is prepared to bail em out instead of letting competition take its course.
Point #4 was probably orginally written for the psychiotic & brillant Clarence Boddicker in the dystopian Detroit. Thank god RoboCop put a stop to that. Delta City rules.
Point #5 I've seen Glenn Schembechler, and you sir are no Bo.
Clay, if i were you, I would bring your UAW sticker, your Barry Sanders Jersey, and a paper bag for your head.
better yet, buy a gun, a flak jacket, and an ED-209.