Fan Violence Erupts in Meltdown at the Meadowlands

While the NFL has done its part to crack down on helmet-to-helmet hits in recent years, headshots are still alive and well in the stands at MetLife Stadium. The New Jersey stadium hosted the Christmas Eve tilt between the Jets and Giants, and a recent YouTube video (has since been pulled) demonstrates how well these two fanbases interacted with each other.

It would be irresponsible to whittle this incident as simply “Another reason never to go to an NFL game in person.” Nearly one million people see the NFL in person every week, and this is the first documented violence in the stadium we've seen in some time. This is, presumably, a startling minority.

It is worth pointing out that the mindless security theatre of patting down every Tom, Dick and Geno entering the stadium didn't prevent this. Those that cite the practice of “feeling safer” by watching others having their persons searched in public should take note that such barehanded brutality wasn't brought about by weapons, but a wanton disregard for other people. It's not unlike getting cut off in traffic, but it is about 100 times more painful.

One smart thing the league could do to curb this sort of thing is to keep the proximity of certain fanbases in mind. The correlation between this Jets-Giants incident and the preseason game between the Raiders and 49ers leads one to wonder if these fanbases can intermingle without incident. Neither matchup particularly represents a historical rivalry, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if the league took an extra step in keeping these teams off each other's respective schedules.

Hopefully the league will embrace one aspect of this apparent rise in fan violence: the intrepid amateur videographers capturing this stuff on video and sharing it with all of us. If the more unruly fans realize that their actions could be immortalized, and eventually prosecuted, we could start to see fewer of these incidents.

Some guys just like to fight. It doesn't have to happen while we're trying to watch the game.