It didn’t really shock to me to read reports of the Kansas City Chiefs superfan called “ChiefsAholic” being sentenced to 32 years in prison for a string of robberies.
After all, fan is a term derived from the root word fanatic.
While the ChiefsAholic story is the extreme example, I’ve seen a lot of bizarre fan behavior in spending more than three decades covering the sports world.
I admit to having become something of a fan myself, choosing teams for which I root now that professional concerns no longer preclude that. And I’ve gone to a game or two as a fan wearing a team’s jersey.
Never, however, have I painted my face, or body in team colors, taken off my coat and shirt in sub-freezing temperatures to show (drunken?) support, used social media to issue death threats to underperforming athletes, or indulged in any of the other extreme behaviors exhibited by fans gone wild.
ChiefsAholic, the guy who showed up at games dressed as a gray wolf, with Chiefs boxer shorts, had a sideline as a bank robber. Reports indicate he needed the cash to finance his travel, not to mention having a gambling problem.
It would seem to me that fanaticism, be it sports, politics, religion, is a Petri dish for extreme behavior. In the sports example, people who are not content merely to root for the home team, and instead turn their homes into temples of memorabilia, and often also turn themselves into human billboards, are people you might think would be vulnerable to other extreme behavior.
In the case of ChiefsAholic, that would be a presumption proven to be correct.
Some of our most extreme homegrown fans are those of the Steelers. Recall about 20 years back the story of the guy who died and had as his funeral home display with him sitting in a recliner watching a loop of Steelers highlights on television, remote on hand.
I was covering the Steelers-Raiders game in 1990 at the LA Coliseum when a Steelers fan was nearly beaten to death by Raiders counterparts for the unpardonable sin of wearing a Steelers T-shirt while he traversed their section of what the Los Angeles Times called “low-priced seats.”
Steelers medical staff attended to the victim before he was taken to the hospital, in critical condition.
Perhaps the greatest example of mass fan misbehavior I witnessed personally came Dec. 10, 1983, at New York’s Shea Stadium.
The Steelers playoff hopes were slipping away with each Cliff Stoudt interception in a season he was called upon to replace injured Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw.
Stoudt, as was his wont, blamed his lacklustre wide receivers.
But Bradshaw returned to bail out the Steelers, throwing two touchdown passes, one each to Greg Garrity and Calvin Sweeney, in just over a quarter of work before blowing out his elbow for good.
The Steelers won, 34-7, but it was Bradshaw’s final game. It also was the final Jets game at Shea Stadium, which primarily was the home of baseball’s Mets.
Fans were into taking home souvenirs. Late in the game, fans in one end zone were ripping up bleacher boards and swinging them like swords. Other bad behavior was common.
The stadium’s jail cell, located along the tunnel to the dressing rooms, was jammed with misbehaving fans when it was time to talk to Steelers coach Chuck Noll after the game.
Back then, postgame interviews tended to be informal affairs, often conducted in such tunnels or other unsuitable locations.
Twice, Noll’s postgame remarks were interrupted by a pack of police pushing past and then coming back again, trying to get medical aid for a fellow officer who had failed to compensate for the December breeze and sprayed himself with some sort of pepper spray.
Noll just shook his head, flashing a bemused smile.
Steelers fans treat their good luck talisman, the Terrible Towel, with reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts. One such fan had a Terrible Towel at the Vatican after the new pope was named.
A humorous towel anecdote, from the Steelers’ Super Seventies decade, saw a fan run onto the field during a Steelers-Oilers playoff game at Three Rivers Stadium wearing two Terrible Towels as loincloths, over a pair of shorts. As I recall, he drank a ceremonial toast at midfield and ran off the field.
You may not be surprised to learn that the guy later in life reportedly ended up in legal trouble, for transgressions that included loan misdeeds and giving the appearance of looking to commit suicide by leaping off one of Pittsburgh’s bridges.
Typical fan stuff.
Sam Ross Jr's site 