Something doesn't feel right about posting a podcast on a Monday. Then again, we had one of our more interesting discussions to date. The reason? John Steigerwald, the man who seemed to blame Bryan Stow for the beating he took at the hands of crazy Dodgers' fans, emailed Bengoodfella in response to BGF's breakdown of his article.Other topics include the brand of Skip Bayless, the lack of a comments feature on Grantland and the Knicks' lack of trade assets.
5 comments:
Just as an update, Dylan and I taped this Saturday at 2pm. I had just emailed John Steigerwald back at this point and we had further conversations about what he and I wrote later. I better understand now what his intent was in writing what he did. Do I still think it came off wrong and poorly? Of course I do, but I at least get what he was trying to say.
What's interesting is Martin had a comment in the comments that said:
"Sadly, I think that the point that Steigerwald thinks he was making, could be made in a non-offensive fashion by a decent writer. Covering the broader overall concepts of tribalism, violence, uniforms, booze. It would make an interesting social sciences article I think."
There is research quoted to me by John Steigerwald from the early 1980's related to exactly this type of thing. It is the idea of over-identification by fans and how it can lead to violence during games.
I pretty much just over-simplified the issue.
Yeah, one couldn't have lived in Los Angeles the last 5 years the Raiders were here without that kind of idea coming up in your head. As someone who has only lightly studied the goings on in the Serbian/Croatian conflict and how the Balkans jsut disintegrated into tribal states almost overnight, it's someithng I'm interested in.
Martin, that's the sort of topic he was trying to tackle in his column on Stow. It didn't go so well, but at its core, and this is what is interesting apart from the poorly written article, is I think there is a sense fan behavior has gone downhill.
My argument was that I believe in the over-identification by fans, but I think alcohol has a huge role. It takes someone from really liking a team to becoming more vocal and potentially violent about it.
I'm sorry but to me it seems like all of Steigerwald's research occured AFTER the fallout from his moronic column. Only then did he take the time to point to the larger issues Stow's beating might be related to. His piece still reads as an author taking potshots at someone who was beaten into a coma because Steigerwald thinks wearing replica jerseys is juvenile. I don't buy for a second that he was trying to touch on any larger issues when he first hammered out this piece of shit.
Anon, it isn't my place to defend him and I really have no idea when he started doing the research on this issue. I have done enough explaining his point of view as it is. I haven't read his book, but in his "Just Watch the Game" book he has a section on the game experience and when it used to be actually watching the game. I think part of that chapter discusses parts of what may lead to fan violence at games.
If not, it certainly seems like his upcoming book will cover something similar to this. I don't know for sure when his research started on this issue. So the Stow column does read as him taking a shot at Stow for wearing a replica jersey to a game. There's no doubt it tends to read that way. I'd have to do more research on him to find out exactly when he started talking about these issues.
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