NFL making fan safety a high priority as aggressive behavior escalates 11/23/12
Terrance Harris, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
In Dan Moses' mind, the gorgeous January day in San Francisco couldn't have been better. The New Orleans native turned Bay Area transplant and his two teenage daughters were headed to Candlestick Park to see their beloved New Orleans Saints take on the San Francisco 49ers in a divisional playoff game. They came dressed in Saints jerseys and gear, ready to scream "Who Dat" and cheer their team to victory.
New Orleans Saints fans are surrounded by elated Niners fans after a first quarter interception in the NFC divisional playoff game between the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park on Sunday, January 14, 2012. A number of Saints fans complained about the fan experience at Candlestick Park that day.
Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Unfortunately their outing quickly turned into a nightmare as their joy was invaded by mean-spirited and aggressive 49ers fans in the parking lot and near their seats. Moses and his daughters feared for their safety as fans screamed in their faces, threatened physical harm and bombarded them with F-bombs and all types of insults.
The threats and anger seemed to come from every direction: in front of them; behind them; to either side. Menacing 49ers fans were all around them.
Moses is certain about the only thing that saved him and his daughters from harm last January was the Saints losing the game.
"I was really worried if the Saints had won the game," Moses recalled this week. "I really thought if we had won that we were going to be physically in danger. I was really worried about what we were going to do. We were just going to put our heads down and wait for an hour.
"When the Saints lost, I felt a fair amount of relief. I grabbed the girls and we sprinted out. Everybody was busy celebrating; they didn't care."
New Orleans Saints fans well-behaved, according to stadium executive
Moses and his daughters weren't alone that day in being harassed by aggressive and likely intoxicated 49ers fans. Several Saints fans who had flown into town to attend the divisional playoff game complained about how they were treated at Candlestick Park where there seemed to be no visible security.
Moses says he knows some Saints fans who had had enough of the harassment and returned to their hotels to watch the game. Moses wasn't one who made the choice to exit early.
"I thought about it and it just goes counter to every bit of fan support and going to games," Moses said. "I've gone to so many sporting events and Saints games and I stay to the end. I'm a loyal fan. I was there and I wanted to root on my team.
"At some point maybe that would have been the smart thing to do but I was caught up in the moment. It was an incredible football game. I was caught up in the game. I didn't want to leave. It would have felt like admitting defeat."
It wasn't a day the NFL, the 49ers or the city of San Francisco was proud of. It is a day that is conjuring old feelings as the 49ers (7-2-1) and Saints (5-5) get set to meet in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in a key NFC matchup Sunday.
"It's really embarrassing because nobody wants to be known that way just because of a few knuckleheads that chose to behave that way," said Jim Mercurio, who is the 49ers' vice president for stadium operations and security. "It's not representative of the San Francisco 49ers, it's not representative of our fans and our fan base. It's representative of a couple of knuckleheads in that fan base.
"I'm sure there will be a number of 49ers fans who will travel down to New Orleans this weekend and I would hope and expect that when they walk into the venue down there that they treat those fans with the utmost respect while still rooting for their team. We are expecting there not to be any issues.
"New Orleans is a great city, San Francisco is a great city and both cities have great fans but on that one day not so good," he continued.
Excessive fan behavior and fan-on-fan violence has seemed to become more widespread in recent years and teams and the league are appearing to crack down hard on offenders as they promote a family friendly environment.
But no matter how hard any team or any league tries, there are still going to be incidents when you have thousands of fans, many of whom have spent the hours prior to kickoff drinking at tailgate parties and continuing the festivities during the game.
That is precisely what seemed to be the case in January when the Saints took on the 49ers at Candlestick Park. The rough housing was not going on just on the field but up in the stands that day.
Moses had never felt so helpless.
A number of New Orleans Saints fans made the trip to San Francisco for the Saints-49ers playoff game last January.
Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
"It was a pretty traumatic experience for me and my daughters and really was unlike anything I had seen or expected," said Moses, who grew up in Uptown but moved to the Bay Area 25 years ago. "I had gone to Saints games most of my life and it was nothing but everybody has a good time and respects the other team.
"It's very family friendly and people bring dates. It's just a nice atmosphere. There is some good-natured jeering but nothing that sort of hints at real violence.
"But at that game there were so many times I just thought we were going to get beat up and somebody was going to do physical harm to us because we were wearing Saints colors," he continued. "The amount of people that cursed at us was just unbelievable. I heard more F-bombs in three or four hours than I heard in 10 years. It was an unsettling experience."
The Saints-49ers game got the attention of the league and prompted the NFL security team into action to increase security at Candlestick Park. By the following week's NFC championship game against the New York Giants, the 49ers fans were under strict zero-tolerance guidelines and security was beefed up with more of presence from the San Francisco Police Department.
NFL chief security officer Jeffrey Miller met with Commissioner Roger Goodell to discuss his plan for dealing with Candlestick and making certain that a relative few rowdies did not detract from the desired NFL fan experience.
It might have seemed odd that such drastic measures were taken then and not following a preseason matchup in August 2011 between the 49ers and neighboring Oakland Raiders that saw two Oakland fans shot in a parking lot outside of Candlestick and another visiting fan severely beaten in one of the stadium bathrooms. The only significant action that seemed to come out of those events was an announcement that the 49ers and Raiders would no longer meet in preseason games.
"It was post the Saints-San Francisco game that we sat down here in New York," NFL head of security Ray DiNunzio said. "Jeff met with the commissioner and we prepared an extensive operations plan to ensure what happened at the game wouldn't happen the following week at the Giants game.
"We have been moving in a positive direction since."
While some incidents have continued to occur with aggressive fans in Candlestick Park, even as recently as Monday night's game against the Chicago Bears, Mercurio said a great deal of progress has been made.
"We've had some successes," Mercurio said. "We still have got some things that we would like to continue getting better at. We've had some good support from the NFL and San Francisco Police Department.
"We've had some pretty good successes but we don't want to rest on that either, you know."
David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune DAVID GRUNFELD / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE during a NFC playoff game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, Ca. Saturday January 15, 2012.
While much attention has been paid to Candlestick Park, the issue of aggressive/violent fans is widespread. There are fights in stadiums across the NFL each week whether it be in Oakland, Cleveland, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia or even New Orleans.
The exact metrics on how many incidents occur are carefully tracked but not released by the NFL. The NFL and its teams, however, seem to go to great lengths to limit and even eliminate such actions.
Since 2008, all NFL teams have been guided by what is known as the NFL's "Best Practices on Fan Conduct" which is a set of rules of what is tolerated from fans and how to deal with unruly fans and keep the masses safe.
Teams are evaluated annually on how well they adhere to the NFL's recommendations, but ultimately it is up to the teams to decide to what extent they enforce the code of conduct guidelines.
SMG vice president Doug Thornton, whose company manages the Superdome in addition to NFL stadiums in Jacksonville, Houston and Chicago, says his security teams go above and beyond what is required in assuring the best possible fan experience.
For instance, at all of the stadiums SMG manages they have what is known as the Integrated Command Post which is comprised of 14 people from different departments such as housekeeping, ushering, engineering, food services, police and fire department. They are positioned at the highest peak of the venue and equipped with communications technology to identify a problem in their specified area, then dispatch and deal immediately with any issue that may arise.
Additionally, the Superdome has 200 cameras positioned inside and outside of the building that can zoom in on any area or any trouble-maker.
"We at a minimum adhere to the NFL's Best Practices and we are graded on that each and every year by the NFL," Thornton said. "They come in and they mystery shop us. That means they are secret shopping, they have undercover folks doing investigative work and they mystery shop us every year. They do an internal report that is published for the league and the security directors and owners."
By most accounts, the majority of 73,000-plus fans who pack the Superdome on football Sundays are well behaved but it is still quite an undertaking to keep what amounts to be the eighth-largest city in Louisiana safe each week.
"So you have all of the challenges you would have in a small city," Thornton said. "You have care and feeding for the public, you have plumbing, electrical and mechanical issues, you have technical issues.
"Security is a No. 1 priority for us and it is a No. 1 priority for the NFL and that's why the NFL created the Fan Code of Conduct here a few years ago."
Following each game, every home team is required to hand over to the NFL security team the metrics on incidents during, before and after the game. That information is compiled throughout the season to give league security a better sense of where the most troubled venues are, at what points in the game incidents are most likely to occur and how these incidents can be mitigated.
Additionally, the NFL sends out an auditing team to evaluate how well each team adheres to the best practices recommendations. The league also sends research groups out at least once a year to all 31 NFL stadiums to conduct between 250 and 350 surveys of fans, gauging their game experience.
"We rate each club and provide the owner with a very detailed analysis of all the metrics that we capture throughout the course of a season," Miller said. "Then we use that formula for the ratings and then we provide information on how they can improve on what they have done and what they need to do in getting ready for the next season."
But even with such detailed measures taken there is still no guaranteed way to ensure incidents won't arise. The NFL just wants to mitigate the actions of a few to ensure the enjoyment for the majority of the fans.
"Like the commissioner said we want to take it from an R-rating to a PG-13 and that's what we are trying to do," Miller said. "We are making some progress and we know that from the fan surveys.
"We're not perfect, we're not done, we have plenty of work to do and we are going to continue to do that work but I think we are moving in the right direction."
But noted sociologist Jerry M. Lewis, who has done extensive research in sports sociology and has written the book "Sports Fan Violence In North America," says the problem with fan-on-fan violence not only will continue but it is likely to get worse.
Lewis says that is likely because the profile of the typical trouble-maker in stadiums and arenas is not likely to change anytime soon. While code words such as thugs and hoodlums have been use to describe the bullying fans at Candlestick, Lewis said the typical problem people are young to middle age white men who make up the vast majority of the spectators.
"Unfortunately, I don't see it ending in the near future because of the circumstances of the male role," said Lewis, who is an emeritus professor at Kent State University just outside of Cleveland. "It's not older people, it's not for the most part blacks who are involved in the fan violence. It tends to be located in a relatively small demographic category: young and not so young white males and they are not going to go away because they are one of the big supporters of sports.
"You go to Cavs games for example, it's a predominantly black team but the fans are almost all white."
Lewis says another problem is the mixed signals fans receive from the home team about behavior. They are encouraged to be aggressive by being told to yell, scream and even do things like wave their arms to distract shooters or even field-goal kickers.
"There is a lot of anger in our society. One way to get rid of it is to do it at sporting events," Lewis said. "You know organizations give permission to be rowdy. They tell you to yell, shout and try to interfere with the free throws with the wands so there are all kinds of ways the organization gives the fan permission to do what he normally wouldn't do on the streets.
"In my lectures, students wouldn't get up and start waving their books at me to interfere with my lectures."
At any rate, it doesn't sound like Moses will be taking in any NFL games involving his favorite team even if there is a rematch at Candlestick during the playoffs.
"I know one thing, I wouldn't wear any of my Saints gear," he said. "I wouldn't bring my daughters, either. So if I am going to do that I don't know if I would go to the game because in my mind that is part of being a fan. If you can't bring your family, you can't wear your team's colors and cheer for your team I don't know. That's a great question.
"But I am guessing I just wouldn't want to go. It wouldn't be worth it just to sit there, be quiet and worry about my safety. That just sort of defeats the purpose."
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