You can’t blame Syracuse University for a couple of knuckleheads finding it the perfect time to throw down during a free, non-competitive sporting event/concert like last night. A stabbing on the floor of the Carrier Dome during Midnight Madness is just idiotic. Go duel it out Jets/Sharks-style under the 81 overpass. Don’t get blood on my Otto t-shirt.
In every crowd, at every stadium, fans get boozed up, find those beer muscles, get pissed off at something inane, and decide to prove just how tough they are. How do you keep out every idiot out of the joint? Unfortunately, the dummies always seem to outnumber you.
But are there ways for SU to prevent the violence? There’s certainly some possibilities to limit it. You can charge for the tickets from here on out, but honestly how much would you pay to watch the SU hoops team practice? $5? $10? And does a few bucks really scare away the fools that want to fight? People pay way more than that for tickets to games and we still have fans doing battle. I’ve witnessed the drunk tank under Gillette Stadium during a Pats/Jets playoff game. Those people paid $100 or more with 75 other bozos to spend the night in a dog cage.
You could limit the tickets to specific distribution points, like picking them up at the box office, getting them at Wegman’s – forcing people to make an effort instead of just waltzing in for some free entertainment.
The stabbing is the part that scares everyone, because then it’s not just two drunks throwing some fists. It’s a knife, blood, and medics having to whisk a victim to an ambulance. Why not institute the pat-down? Maybe fans had to be frisked last night, but if so there was a security guard that missed a blade. When I head to Giants Stadium or Citi Field or Yankee Stadium, I get frisked. You have to just expect that it’s part of the experience.
If we’re missing knives on the pat-down, maybe it’s time for a few metal detectors. No one wants to feel like they’re walking into DeathZone 2065, but if it keeps these incidents out of the Dome, then fine. We deal with it on planes, at government offices and other places. It’s part of the world we live in.
My guess is SU takes this thing seriously, because it could’ve been worse, and it’s front page news on ESPN.com. Thankfully it’s only a handful of dopes and they’ll all survive. But if this were a shooting, then we’re talking some serious potential disaster. Can’t ever underestimate the idiots.
Posted: D.A.
