Fans' behavior needs work

What's a championship game without a riot?
The culmination of the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments have once again brought this sad subject in sports to the forefront of our attention.
No longer is the focus solely on the anticipated matchup between teams. Instead, it's about the postgame celebration and -- all too many times -- the ensuing riots.
The combination of alcohol, frustration from defeat and a lack of common sense leads thousands of fans to unite for the common goal -- to disrupt society and garner national attention while casting a grim shadow on their institution.
Getting back to normal: You can bet the communities of Tucson, Ariz., and West Lafayette, Ind., are continuing to recover from their latest setbacks -- students battling police in riot gear after their respective college basketball teams lost national title games.
And for what?
After Arizona lost to Duke 82-72 in the NCAA men's championship game Monday in Minneapolis, fans in Tucson overturned vehicles and set them on fire. Others looted and retaliated against authority.
Talk about being saddened over a loss. Truly, this is sad.
Police in riot gear tried to break up the mass by firing rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at the students.
"It was like a war zone," one University of Arizona student was quoted as saying.
Rage of the runner-up: The night before, Purdue fans in West Lafayette, Ind., became unruly after their women's basketball team lost 68-66 to Notre Dame in the national title game.
They set fires while throwing rocks and launching bottle rockets at officers.
This week's riots are nothing new. They are present at every level of competition, in varying forms and degrees of intensity, but they seem to be most dramatic following big-time college or professional sporting events.
"It's just so very stupid, just sad and tragic," Arlene Leaf, owner of the damaged Tucson Thrift, told the Associated Press. "Right now I think of all the people in the world who have real problems and they're doing this over a game."
These acts of rage, also prevalent during soccer games overseas, leave us wondering why.
Examining the issue: Steve Ellyson, a professor of psychology at Youngstown State, has an answer.
"Alcohol is a factor, but part of it is a crowd mentality that they can't catch us all," said Ellyson, who specializes in social psychology. "People become more anonymous in crowds. Add alcohol and you get people doing things they wouldn't normally do sober, alone -- or both."
What's more, the type of people who gather in those crowds often have the same idea, which David D. Haddock and Daniel D. Polsby wrote in the Cato Journal.
"Certain people thrive on the action -- relish getting drunk, fighting, smoking; enjoy the whiff of anarchy, harassing and beating respectable people and vandalizing their property," they write.
"They gather into crowds because they want to participate and they know why the other people in the crowd, or at least a great many of them, have come."
Ellyson, who has been a professor at Youngstown State for 15 years, is also a high school and college basketball official.
Over his 20 years in the sport, he's seen crowds become more unruly, a trait that may be reflective of a society in the midst of relaxing its rules.
"We live in a society that places a high value on sports," Ellyson said. "People invest a lot of time and energy in watching sports."
And, when it's all over, many have spent too much time embarrassing themselves and those around them.
XBrian Richesson is a sportswriter for The Vindicator.