NFL Encourages Fans to Send Text Messages to Security Staff to Report Troublemakers

December 30th, 2008

Via: USA Today:

Count Washington Redskins season-ticket holder Rick Cable as a big supporter of the NFL’s new Fan Code of Conduct.

During the Redskins’ 23-6 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Nov. 3 at FedEx Field just outside Washington, Cable says, an obnoxious Steelers fan kept waving a “Terrible Towel” in the 47-year-old Cable’s face and screaming “Redskins suck!” Rather than escalate the confrontation, the Lusby, Md., resident quietly sent a text message to the stadium’s security command center. Security people responded quickly. When the Steelers fan gave them a hard time, he was ejected.

“It worked great,” Cable says.

It also reflected how fans are embracing new text-messaging systems that allow fans in NFL stadiums to inconspicuously report drunk or disorderly neighbors without confronting them, a provocative tactic many of the league’s 32 teams are using to enforce the conduct code announced by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Aug. 5.

Goodell’s rules — the result of rising concern that fan misconduct was driving some people from games — say that patrons who are drunk or disruptive, who use foul language or make obscene gestures or who verbally or physically harass other fans can be refused admission to games, or kicked out of them without refunds. Such fans also can be stripped of their season tickets.

The sweeping attempt to decrease misbehavior in stadiums and parking lots is a “work in progress,” says Milt Ahlerich, the NFL’s vice president of security. But the initiative, he says, “absolutely is working.”

As part of the program, teams are asking the 22.2 million patrons they predict will attend 333 preseason, regular season and playoff games this season to help identify bad apples in the stands.

Fans still are urged to complain to an usher or call a security hotline in the stadium to report unruly behavior. But text-messaging lines — typically advertised on stadium scoreboards and on signs where fans gather — are aimed at allowing tipsters to surreptitiously alert security personnel via cellphone without getting involved with rowdies or missing part of a game.

Research Credit: Bernard Marx

3 Responses to “NFL Encourages Fans to Send Text Messages to Security Staff to Report Troublemakers”

  1. anothernut says:

    I think one of the most brilliant, and subtle, points Orwell made in 1984 was the fact that, by they time we join the story, any significant form of resistance has long since died out. And he brings this out by making the “hero” of the tale a weak, solitary figure, whose dreams, while crimes, are really very mild. Mild, but not perfectly and unconditionally supportive of Big Brother’s state — and that of course is the crime.

    The really scary thing is, the people ratting on their neighbors don’t see it as anything remotely Orwellian.

  2. Kevin says:

    Oh but this is about EMPOWERING people!

    “This is about empowering the fans,” Ahlerich says. “And getting them to help us, and help security, do their jobs.”

    How can that be anything but double plus good???

  3. Eileen says:

    Those Steelers. They rock. Not my world so much as all the people around me. ADDICTED TO FOOTBALL. Play and bet on Fantasy Football. I just watch.
    This program as described is totally ludricrous in compaarison to what I sense the people around me are experiencing these days.
    I think Pittsburghers would rather experience a riot rather than rat on another, and actually probably need some kind of physical,emotional therapy to release their total effing astronomical angst they feel as their world is crashing around them.
    Lots I’ve heard from are crying into their terrible towels about how they’ve lost all their money in their savings plans. Dashed are the dreams of early retirement, and these stories are from people who probably have the “safest” jobs in the once USA.
    Shit. People in Pittsburgh are waving their terrible towels in memory of Myron Cope who was the voice of our games.
    Football is a violent sport. But it is a great comfort to the men and women who work with me. I often times wish they’d pay as much attention to and be as vehement in their feelings in the other aspects of their lives that even if they don’t know it, are going into the crescendo part of the symphony.
    “Gardening is the new golf.”
    I will teach.
    The terrible towel is going to be something more than what we wave over our heads in a football game.
    God bless us, each and every one, and Happy New Year (of the Ox).

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