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A Handy Guide to when it is OK for fans to throw stuff

It’s no fun to see fans you associate with acting badly. After something embarrassing happens, national writers weigh in about your fans’ bad decisions and rival fans bookmark the video evidence for future fodder.

BYU fans cannot tolerate anyone throwing things on or at the court or field. I am glad it was mostly harmless trash like paper and popcorn being thrown at Lavell Edwards Stadium on Saturday after the loss to Utah. That’s certainly better than ice balls or screwdrivers thrown in other stadiums years ago. But after the St. Mary’s basketball game a few years ago, this now appears to be a pattern of bad behavior and it can’t continue.

There are some who want to justify incorrect behavior as somehow warranted because it comes from their own. Don’t fall into this trap. Just because it’s your guy doing something wrong doesn’t mean you can just get mad at other people for pointing it out.

Those national columnists and rival fans are right to call out the few agitators causing problems. After the week of rival tribalism, where affiliations apparently matter more than actions, it’s important for BYU fans to call a spade a spade and not allow this in their stadiums again.

 

In honor of some other (but somewhat crude) advice, below you will find your handy field guide to when it’s ok to throw something on the court or field:

The opposing team won:
No.

A player on the opposing team yelled at me:
No.

The opposing coach looked at me funny:
No.

A player or coach on the opposing team cursed at me:
Still no.

The opposing team is jumping up and down on our logo at midfield: It happens. What you’re seeing isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. You still can’t throw anything.

The opposing team ran into the stands and started punching me:
Like that would ever happen. Seriously — if this happens, throwing things on the court or not is probably not your biggest issue to consider.

The mascot sprayed me with silly string:
Maybe. This actually happened to me as BYU student. Swoop was apparently not a fan of my repeated questions about how many of his friends had been lost to family-size buckets at KFC. He came up to me later with two cans of silly string hidden under his wings, took them out and emptied them at me. As he walked away, I gathered the string up into a ball and threw it back at him. I was removed from the stadium for a while, but after conversations with two event staffers I was able to convince them that as long as nothing was thrown at me from the field, I wouldn’t throw anything back. They bought my defense that I was just kindly returning the mascot’s silly string incase he needed it again, but you might not be so lucky. They would have been entirely justified in kicking me out halfway through the first quarter.

The refs made a bad call:
No.

The refs made a ton of bad calls:
No.

The refs made so many bad calls, it was detrimental to our team’s chances for victory:
Especially no. I know it’s frustrating. I don’t care how bad the calls were. I don’t care if the ref mistakenly spoke into a hot mic that they were paid off by the other team. Yell unto your vocal chords give out. I know I do.

You can’t throw anything on the field. Don’t do it. And don’t let the people sitting around you do it, either. It’s never OK to throw something, harmless or not, onto the field.

2 Comments

  1. Doug

    September 27, 2013 at 12:28 pm

    When is it ok to yell during the opening prayer?

  2. Mars

    September 27, 2013 at 1:00 pm

    “Like that would ever happen.” Were you referencing this?: http://www.spike.com/video-clips/gns779/nba-players-attack-fans