Whatever happened to panty raids?

AMERICA AT LARGE: In Raleigh, North Carolina, one student broke a leg and two others sustained knee injuries when rowdy fans tore down the goal posts in celebration of North Carolina State University's 17-7 win over Florida State.

In Columbus, Ohio, police are still reviewing videotape in an attempt to identify perpetrators beyond the 49 arrested on the spot in the violent aftermath of Ohio State's 14-9 victory over Michigan. OSU fans reportedly started fires, overturned cars, threw rocks and bottles, and battled police in the streets.

In Pullman, Washington, the Washington State student body hurled debris out of the stands in the general direction of both game officials and players from archrival Washington University after the latter won in triple overtime, a victory facilitated by a penalty called against State.

In Clemson, South Carolina, fans raced onto the field and tore down a goalpost after Clemson's 27-20 win over South Carolina. A 67-year-old deputy sheriff and a Clemson student were hospitalised with injuries, the deputy after he wound up on the bottom of a pig-pile of 30 celebrating students.

In Berkeley, California, fans stormed right past security guards and ignored the pepper spray long enough to topple both goalposts after Cal defeated Stanford in the 105th renewal of that storied rivalry.

In Honolulu, the fans were relatively well- behaved, but authorities had to be summoned when a game between Hawaii and the University of Cincinnati ended in a full-scale brawl between the student-athletes representing both sides. (The teams' mascots even got into a fight on the field.)

Each of these unrelated instances of campus unrest occurred on a single day - last Saturday, to be precise - and America's institutions of higher learning now find themselves facing at least two imponderable questions: are we educating a generation of English soccer hooligans here or what? And whatever happened to panty raids, anyway?

At Ohio State, where the most earnest riots appear to have taken place, the violence spilled out into a 10-block section of town strewn with bars and off-campus hangouts. University president Karen Holbrook said in a public apology that "the line between celebration and rampage was crossed". "I'd like to say that most of these people are not our students, but unfortunately, they are," added Bill Hall, the OSU vice-president for student affairs.

The North Carolina State melee nearly took place before the game was even over. Hundreds of fans had to be chased off the field and several dozen removed from the goalpost under threat of forfeit before the last few seconds of the contest could take place.

At Clemson, according to Anderson County sheriff Gene Taylor, "a tidal wave of people came onto the field. It's silly," said Taylor. "The field is for players, coaches, and cheerleaders, the stands are for the fans. Some folks need to grow up."

In many of the above-cited instances, the fans, mostly students, were unquestionably out of control, and if the police appear to have overreacted in their zeal to protect "private property" (in most cases, the goalposts) from those practising civil disobedience, there are safety issues which come into play here as well.

Tearing down a goalpost isn't quite the same exercise it was in your grandfather's day, when the posts were made by slapping together and whitewashing a few 2x4s. Today's metal posts can weigh hundreds of pounds, and the people involved in toppling them do not for the most part appear to have been engineering majors.

I was present 19 years ago in New Haven, Connecticut, when a bunch of Harvard fans celebrated a win over traditional rival Yale by pulling down a goalpost. The falling post landed on an 18-year-old female Harvard freshman, who was wheeled out of the Yale Bowl on life-support after sustaining a fractured skull.

Two decades ago, after a game in Foxboro, Massachusetts, a bunch of Patriots' fans celebrated their team's ascension to that year's NFL play-offs by tearing down one of the goalposts, after which a score or so of them carried the ponderous trophy right out of the stadium. They were marching down the highway when the post came into contact with a live wire and electrocuted one of the celebrants.

In attempting to explain the rash of 2002 fan violence which reached its zenith with last weekend's coast-to-coast havoc, the New York Times, as it is wont to do when it feels a need to explain the obvious, tracked down a man named - honest - Jerry Lewis, whom it introduced to its readers as an expert who "has studied violence by sports fans for 27 years". Jerry M Lewis is an Ohio sociologist who, we were told, was able to accurately forecast the riot in Columbus even before kick-off.

"It was a classic 'celebration riot'," Lewis told the Times. "It unfortunately was predicable, because five factors were in play: a natural urban gathering place was available, it had easy access, a championship was at stake, it was a close game, and the home team won." (One couldn't help wondering how Jerry Lewis would have explained away what happened at Lansdowne Road the night all those England fans showed up back in 1995.)

He could be right, but I doubt it. I've been covering football for even longer than this Dr Lewis has been studying football riots, and it strikes me that all five of his underlying factors put together may not have been as relevant as two others I could name: booze, and cable television.

In this day and age even the most backwater college game is televised somewhere, including each and every one of the above-mentioned on a Saturday afternoon. For an 18-year-old, particularly one with a snoot-full of beer and emboldened by the pack mentality, the chance to cash in his 15 minutes of fame is probably all too inviting.

The videotape of the Ohio State riot may yet prove to be a crucial investigative tool, but it says here if the miscreants hadn't viewed the exercise as their chance to be on camera they might never have come staggering out of their seats in the first place.