Post by hifigator on May 16, 2006 12:41:48 GMT -5
At the urging of representatives from UF and Georgia, ESPN and the stadium itself are no longer going to use the age old traditional name for the Florida-Georgia football game. Here is one view on whether that is a good thing or not. It was titled "I'm tired of throwing the baby out with the bath water."
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In this case the "baby" is football and the "bath water" is an unfortunate incident which happens.
Follow me on this: last year a UF student was beaten to death in an apparent random act of violence involving a four on one beating after the Florida-Georgia football game. The four suspects all had a criminal background involving violence. Now yes, the victim had in fact been watching the game, but to consider this a consequence of the game is ridiculous. This was more a tragedy which unfortunately goes on in larger cities on an almost daily basis. It is far more similar to the beating deaths of homeless individuals in the Daytona area by a group of teenagers, than to an outbreak from a football game. Now I am not making light in any way the tragic deaths of any of these individuals and without a doubt the perpetrators need to feel the stinging arm of justice.
That being said, Jeremy Foley as well as administrators from the University of Georgia have sucessfully pushed for the removal of the tagline "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" from the Florida-Georgia game. Now on one hand, the "name of the game" is pretty irrelevant on the grand scale of things, and if some good can come from an action such as this, then that is certainly a good thing. The problem is that this does nothing to address the problem. Even if removing this moniker were to curtail a degree of drinking among those who venture to the game, that still does little if anything to address the real problem. In this particular case, the "problem" was a group of derelicts who had been in and out of trouble with the law for quite some time. We need a better system to punish these types of guys the first and second times they get in trouble, and not wait until the fifth or sixth time and then "address" the problem by punishing others.
If this were an isolated incident then it really wouldn't be worth mentioning. And once again, if the only "harm" done was the removal of a famous tagline, albeit a traditional one at that, then I think we would all be willing to live with that. The problem is that this type of action is becoming far too common and does nothing to address the real problems.
About a dozen years ago or so there were similar incidents in Gainesville. On one tragic night two individuals were killed in fights. These deaths happened to coincide with the day of a Florida-Tennessee football game. The knee-jerk response from Jeremy Foley as well as local officials at his insistence was to punish the football fans. The irony is that these types of fights are a weekly occurrence in almost every town of any size in America. Certainly a death or in this case two are not normal, nor should they be dismissed as "boys being boys." But they also should not serve as another excuse to punish those who had nothing to do with the tragedies. Neither of those fights were during the game. Neither of the fights were even associated with the game. At one of the parties they didn't even watch the game at all. At the other, gametime was nothing but a handful of roommates and close friends watching the game hours before a party scheduled for later that night. That didn't stop Foley and crew from immediately taking advantage of the situation and "cracking down" on what they probably wanted to anyway.
First things first: they got rid of half time pass-outs. Now granted, Kamikazee halftime was famous/infamous depending on your point of view. But the biggest "crime" to come about as a result was nothng more than a handful of ejections at the game. They also took a much stricter look at the "evils" of open containers. Stories of such unlucky victims of the police state for these types of infractions are now somewhat legendary. There were also pressures put to limit or even eliminate other business promotions targeted to the gameday enjoyment of the fans. Among victims of such was the Joe's Deli across from campus. This ultimately resulted in the Reicherts desiding to sell the business and not deal with the increasing hassles. We now have a revovling door of failed businesses in that location istead of a Gainesville tradition. I don't want to go into great details here on that particular issue, but if any are interested shoot me a pm and I will give you a little insight.
In any case, the point is there is a trend that makes me very nervous. The actions of the establishment seems to systematically be to restrict and regulate the actions of the masses, which are by and large orderly and well behaved, in some obviously failed attempt to prevent the unavoidable actions of a very few.
Those fights on that tragic September night would not have been avoided by any of these newly imposed regulations. None would have even impacted the situations in the slightest. In fact one of the fights involved 3 hicks from Live Oak coming into town doing nothing but looking for trouble. For those who don't remember, it involved the 20 year old High School wrestling coach and two former wresters on his team, one of which who was dismissed from the team for disciplinary reasons. In this case, the obvious error to me on the surface is having a 20 year old head coach, especially in a physically confrontational sport like wrestling. I'm sorry, but that is just a formula for disaster to start with. But don't let logic and facts get in the way.
The "feel good" nonsense of "caring" and "doing something" is tough to overcome. These were tragedies for sure and something we all wish had not happened. Unfortunately none of these reactions serve to help prevent such from happening in the future and only serve to "control" the rest of us. But then again, maybe that is their ultimate goal anyway.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any thoughts? Are you experiencing any similar types of "control" issues from the authorities?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this case the "baby" is football and the "bath water" is an unfortunate incident which happens.
Follow me on this: last year a UF student was beaten to death in an apparent random act of violence involving a four on one beating after the Florida-Georgia football game. The four suspects all had a criminal background involving violence. Now yes, the victim had in fact been watching the game, but to consider this a consequence of the game is ridiculous. This was more a tragedy which unfortunately goes on in larger cities on an almost daily basis. It is far more similar to the beating deaths of homeless individuals in the Daytona area by a group of teenagers, than to an outbreak from a football game. Now I am not making light in any way the tragic deaths of any of these individuals and without a doubt the perpetrators need to feel the stinging arm of justice.
That being said, Jeremy Foley as well as administrators from the University of Georgia have sucessfully pushed for the removal of the tagline "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" from the Florida-Georgia game. Now on one hand, the "name of the game" is pretty irrelevant on the grand scale of things, and if some good can come from an action such as this, then that is certainly a good thing. The problem is that this does nothing to address the problem. Even if removing this moniker were to curtail a degree of drinking among those who venture to the game, that still does little if anything to address the real problem. In this particular case, the "problem" was a group of derelicts who had been in and out of trouble with the law for quite some time. We need a better system to punish these types of guys the first and second times they get in trouble, and not wait until the fifth or sixth time and then "address" the problem by punishing others.
If this were an isolated incident then it really wouldn't be worth mentioning. And once again, if the only "harm" done was the removal of a famous tagline, albeit a traditional one at that, then I think we would all be willing to live with that. The problem is that this type of action is becoming far too common and does nothing to address the real problems.
About a dozen years ago or so there were similar incidents in Gainesville. On one tragic night two individuals were killed in fights. These deaths happened to coincide with the day of a Florida-Tennessee football game. The knee-jerk response from Jeremy Foley as well as local officials at his insistence was to punish the football fans. The irony is that these types of fights are a weekly occurrence in almost every town of any size in America. Certainly a death or in this case two are not normal, nor should they be dismissed as "boys being boys." But they also should not serve as another excuse to punish those who had nothing to do with the tragedies. Neither of those fights were during the game. Neither of the fights were even associated with the game. At one of the parties they didn't even watch the game at all. At the other, gametime was nothing but a handful of roommates and close friends watching the game hours before a party scheduled for later that night. That didn't stop Foley and crew from immediately taking advantage of the situation and "cracking down" on what they probably wanted to anyway.
First things first: they got rid of half time pass-outs. Now granted, Kamikazee halftime was famous/infamous depending on your point of view. But the biggest "crime" to come about as a result was nothng more than a handful of ejections at the game. They also took a much stricter look at the "evils" of open containers. Stories of such unlucky victims of the police state for these types of infractions are now somewhat legendary. There were also pressures put to limit or even eliminate other business promotions targeted to the gameday enjoyment of the fans. Among victims of such was the Joe's Deli across from campus. This ultimately resulted in the Reicherts desiding to sell the business and not deal with the increasing hassles. We now have a revovling door of failed businesses in that location istead of a Gainesville tradition. I don't want to go into great details here on that particular issue, but if any are interested shoot me a pm and I will give you a little insight.
In any case, the point is there is a trend that makes me very nervous. The actions of the establishment seems to systematically be to restrict and regulate the actions of the masses, which are by and large orderly and well behaved, in some obviously failed attempt to prevent the unavoidable actions of a very few.
Those fights on that tragic September night would not have been avoided by any of these newly imposed regulations. None would have even impacted the situations in the slightest. In fact one of the fights involved 3 hicks from Live Oak coming into town doing nothing but looking for trouble. For those who don't remember, it involved the 20 year old High School wrestling coach and two former wresters on his team, one of which who was dismissed from the team for disciplinary reasons. In this case, the obvious error to me on the surface is having a 20 year old head coach, especially in a physically confrontational sport like wrestling. I'm sorry, but that is just a formula for disaster to start with. But don't let logic and facts get in the way.
The "feel good" nonsense of "caring" and "doing something" is tough to overcome. These were tragedies for sure and something we all wish had not happened. Unfortunately none of these reactions serve to help prevent such from happening in the future and only serve to "control" the rest of us. But then again, maybe that is their ultimate goal anyway.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any thoughts? Are you experiencing any similar types of "control" issues from the authorities?
