I understand the heckler who shouts disparaging comments,
about the performance of a player on the opposing team.
and ILoveHamilton, you directed your comments to an opponent.
Someone who chose a username like yours would never taunt
any player on any team that represents our city, would you?
taunt - abuse vocally; express contempt or ridicule;
-to reproach in a mocking, insulting, or contemptuous manner.
I am aware that most sports fans today
don’t think the Golden Rule applies
to comments they make at sports events.
My question is…why not?
I wouldn’t taunt or insult a Tiger-Cat, no. However I think that, uh, verbally suggesting that its time for a player to be pulled (“its time to pull him”, “gettem’ outta there”, etc), and applauding when he is and the next guy is brought out… I think thats fair game though personally. I don’t consider it taunting or abusive, I’d even say thats part of a lot of sports, whether its the Tiger-Cats, Blue Jays or Raptors that your talking about you see it happen all the time with pitchers and QBs. Timmy Chang got a standing ovation from parts of the stadium when he came in during the Argo game for instance. But being insulting and abusive to your own players, it really doesn’t do any good whatsoever and its not something I do. :thup: Cheer for them home team, or get the heck out of the stadium. :lol:
Thats a really good question about the Golden Rule though, cause I swear, outside of Football, I’m a big believer in it. :lol: So, I’m going to try to give you my best answer because its a question I’ve thought about before and I think its a really good question.
Did you ever see that interview clip with Pinball Clemons, a really great and upstanding person if there ever was one, where they ask him about the Tiger-Cats and he says that, “You know, hate is a really strong word… But we really HATE the Hamiltion Tiger-Cats.”. Maybe I screwed up a word or two, but thats what he said. That’s not a very “golden rule” attitude on the surface. That’s not even a very positive attitude, its completely negative actually. But Pinball, despite being a lifetime Argo, is a classy good guy family man with tons of respect and somebody whose life parents would rightfully tell their children to look up to. What he said is in many ways worse than the forbidden chant even, but clearly, that in no way reflects on his character.
I think that competitive sport of all kinds is a modern healthy expression of a lingering primitive us vs. them mentality, that lets us for a few hours every week want “us” to beat “them” without feeling bad about it. Sport isn’t very golden rule in general without the proper context. Cheering a QB being sacked and possibly having a concussion or broken limb isn’t very nice, but we do it every game and love it. I’m sure when a reciever on the opposing team blows a play, and we cheer his failure, we make him feel terrible, thats not very positive at all, or nice or golden rule but we do it.
I think the context though behind all that, and all sport, is that through competition we make eachother more than we could have been otherwise. We toughen eachother up, we force eachother to be better. And then at the end of the game we shake hands, and suddenly there’s no more hate between Hamilton-Toronto or whoever is opposing eachother. Mostly because there wasn’t ever real true hate to begin with, the only hate between us Tiger-Cat fans and the Argos is the same one that goes on between sibblings. We love them, hate them and love to hate them, and they feel the same way about us. So its more complicated than “non-positive cheering is bad because its not nice and breaks the golden rule” in my opinion, because underneath the non-racist,non-sexist,etc taunts is actually a really good thing… its part of a healthy competitive drive to win, to improve and to bond with your community.
I’m sure someone could argue that we should only be cheering “positive” things, and this would achieve the same effect. Maybe they are right, and I was just taught wrong. Maybe the next generation of fans will think like this, and even should think like this because its the right thing to do. We don’t see too many brawls in the stands anymore between drunken fans for instance like we did in the 80s and early 90s, and no one would argue thats a bad thing. Maybe its the same thing with this. But I don’t know if there is such a thing as only cheering the positive, sport is by nature competitive… to win your opponent must lose. And I still think, if its done in good fun, like I think Pinball Clemons did in that interview, “expressing negative feelings” are actually positive for that reason that competition makes us better.
I think that, back in the days of the forbidden chant, it wasn’t really a negative thing, but actually a fun thing that after 3 hours of 25k+ fans screaming at eachother’s teams, you would see after the game Ti-Cat and Argo fans alike chilling out at the Tim Hortons waiting for the traffic to clear up before heading home or going to bars together. You still see Hamilton-Toronto fans doing this now of course. But I have a strong suspicion that, because it’s competitive sport and not church, if one were to do a poll of Toronto fans that attend Labour Day games, you’d find that many of them miss the lost “negativity” and the forbidden chant too, because these things only appear negative. 