When the British riot, the police get involved. When Americans riot, one guy gets roughed up a bit.
An Oct. 12 article on Annarbor.com opens with “Players and coaches from the Huron and Pioneer high school football teams were involved in a massive fight Friday night that resulted in one person going to the hospital.”
The brawl began when a ticked off coach shoved his equally ticked off counterpart and from there a football riot was born. Too bad the riot was for the wrong kind of football, and too bad the brawl is a disgrace to the fine tradition of “football hooliganism,” more colloquially known as a soccer riot.
Besides involving the wrong kind of football, my other problem with the riot was that it was too tame. Only one person was sent to the hospital? A British riot three years ago, reported in an Aug. 29 FoxNews.com article, mentions three people getting seriously injured. A 2012 riot between Aston Villa and Birmingham City supporters left 14 people injured.
If America is to ever step out of the shadow of our former imperial masters, our course is clear. We as a nation must see to it that such embarrassing farces of a riot do not occur. Worse still, we must make sure that such pissant events never spark such outrage and controversy. The Ann Arbor incident has enlivened the city’s news and caused a wave of outrage and even a resignation.
Somewhere, a British subject is reading about the Ann Arbor football riot, because he forgot for a minute that Americans play real football, not some riot inducing bore fest, and is laughing his bucktoothed head off.
You want outrage and controversy around a sporting event riot? A British riot in 1985 between Juventus and Liverpool supporters killed 39 people.
If America is going to insist that its football is the better football, then it has a solemn duty to remind itself that when it comes to sporting violence, we are outmatched. Since I can’t legally advocate for bigger riots –which would be lunacy even beyond my scotch pickled brain- all I can do is see to it American politics are more violent to ensure progress and reform.
In the sporting world, we Americans must remember we’re not the best at everything. As much as it hurts, there are other nations out there that can do things better than we can. Australians can out-drink us and the British can out riot us. There’s no shame in accepting that.
What we must do as a nation when some football coach slugs another, and the press prepares a storm of fury and anger, is rise up and speak out against their idiocy. We must grab the nearest map of the world and jab a finger at England, once we remember where it is.
We, united in our recognition of our riot inferiority, must say as one, “We got nothin’ on the Limey’s, so calm the frak down!”
