Stay Classy, Crimson Tide Fans!

Alabama might be winners on the field, but their fan base leaves something to be desired.

Alabama walked away from the BCS championship game last week with a 21-0 victory over LSU, but the joy of their second BCS title in three years has been dampened by a viral video showing an Alabama fan sexually assaulting an unconscious LSU fan.

Some background: the video taken from a cell phone first appeared on the YouTube channel for “BamaSportsForum” (which has since been deleted) and was picked up by Deadspin.com two days ago. The incident took place at a Krystal restaurant on Bourbon Street the night of the BCS championship game.

The video, about five minutes long, features several Alabama fans hazing, poking and taking pictures of the unconscious man. Then, one individual exposes himself and places his genitals on the unconscious fan before a restaurant employee steps in to disperse the crowd.

Stupidity by fans is becoming more and more common, both in the professional ranks as well as the amateur ranks.  This is one of the downsides of sports.  Fans become brainwashed into thinking that harrassing, fighting, and humiliating fans of the other team somehow makes them a real fan of their team.  Most of it comes from getting blitzed by the alcohol that the stadiums sell and by the booze that is smuggled into the venue.

But here it seems that an LSU fan drank himself to unconsciousness because his team had an offense that looked like a grade school quarterback was running it.  Anyways, instead of anybody there that saw the man passed out and decided to call the cops or get management from the restaurant out there, Tide fans decided to humiliate this guy.  He deserves to be humiliated because I am almost certain that the guy was trying to get to his car and drive away plowed.  But not to be humiliated by Crimson Tide fans by poking him, hazing him, and then one of the idiots deciding that the guy would look good as a ball sac resting place.

This thought process that we have to denigrate and humiliate our opponents and their fans needs to stop.  In hockey, it has happened to fans of the visiting team in news reports in Montreal, Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Vancouver.  I am sure that it has happened in the other cities as well, but hasn't made the national news.  In football, fans have been attacked in Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Kansas City, Baltimore, Minnesota, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Houston.  Those are ones that I can remember off the top of my head.  And it happens in the college ranks, as noted above, and high school ranks as well.  The sports that America has are not supposed to be bloodsport.  And usually it isn't on the field.  Off the field, that is now debatable.