s. Frequently, parents who don’t agree with a call will argue with a referee to the point of physical violence. It is not unusual to have parents ejected from games for their behavior. Children also observe their parents behaving badly at sporting events, cheering on or cussing at controversial athletes. Young people join in with the crowd behavior at sporting events with the blessings of their parents. Parents who would normally discipline their children for violent behavior at home accept the same behavior as being normal for a spectator at an athletic event. Economics provides a driving incentive for sports violence to continue. Violence brings in a crowd, along with a great deal of money. Superstars who lose their tempers gain media attention. In turn, more newspaper articles are written about the controversial athletes and more tickets are sold. Violence also makes for good television ratings. More viewers will tune in to watch sports that have violent conflicts. Fewer viewers watch non-violent sports such as skiing, snowboarding, figure skating, or golf. Many sports would not thrive without television coverage, so media attention is very important. For years, Indiana University basketball has received attention because of the behavior of its head coach, Bobby Knight. From throwing chairs to cussing out players, Bob Knight has given the media enough fuel to write books about this colorful coach. Would Indiana University have received as much attention over the past twenty years if their coach had been a less controversial person? I don’t think so. Bobby Knight helped to keep IU basketball in the spotlight over the years. People loved him and other people hated him, but the result was that his basketball program received a lot of publicity. It will be interesting to see how the media focuses on IU basketball now that Bobby Knight has been forced out of IU.Some sports violence takes place specifically for the sake of the ...
