So I went to HS in the mid-late 90s in Indiana, and that incident is so ingrained that it is the mnemonic we learned to remember the classification of living things. Knight puts chair on floor, gets suspended – Kingdom phylum class order family genus species.
Why is this motherfucker not in jail and STAYING in jail? He DANGEROUS. ☠️
UrsulaDavina
He should be in jail but Indiana was winning alot during his tenure. That tends to be the reason in sports. Bill Romanowski should have been sent to jail but was apart of 4 super bowl teams. Romanowski was a linebacker and was the poster child of Roid Rage and was involved in BALCO scandal. The gut crushed his own teammate Marcus Williams eye socket.
FUCKING SHIT does everyone in the Bible Belt fucking worship sports? So much for no idol worship ?
morleuca
I mean, it’s the US. There’s a crazy amount of idol worship of all kinds within the “no idols!” Community
HueSatLight
Feels like someone should mention the Nika riots, might as well be me.
Mark
Yeah, it’s weird, rugby and soccer fans are so quiet and well-behaved….
Daibhid C
“This coach violently abused his players and everyone was cool with it because they were winning.”
“Well, supporters of other sports have been known to get into fights with opposing fans, which usually does result in them going to jail.”
Yes, you’re right. Those are the same.
Tobias
Sports fans literally overthrew the Roman government at one point, and were renowned for giving their champion charioteers all sorts of exemptions from following the law.
danimagoo
Oh it’s not just the Bible Belt. Google Philadelphia Eagles fans and Santa Claus.
Less idol worship and more clannishness (with a c, this time). A tribe to belong to, a safe-ish way to direct aggression. (See Bobby Knight comments.)
Also, it’s been a family thing for generations. My great-uncle was born in 1903. Not only did he play basketball, he was heartbroken when they couldn’t have kids. He’d wanted 5, to make his own little team.
Don’t live there now, but I grew up 2 counties from the Indiana border. Many a winter’s night drive the only thing on the radio was high school sneakers squeaking on the ball court.
Roborat
Wow, basketball was already that big? It had only been about 30 years since it was invented when he played.
ProtoMan
I mean, it ain’t just the Bible Belt. If you haven’t seen crazy fans in your neck of the woods, you’re just not looking in the right places. Sports can do things to otherwise normal people.
Hell, forget sports, most any fandom has more… extreme factions that can be crazy if you’re aware of them. If you’re not though, blissful ignorance may be a better way to live.
Modern american sports are probably on the whole less abusive than the norm for the history of human sports.
Schpoonman
It would take me reading the Thagomizer Farside comic only minutes before seeing your name to finally put two and two together. Was wondering why it was always so familiar.
Simulating gladiator games is definitely better than killing people and animals outright, but I’ll always side-eye a sport that requires an ambulance on-site because the possibility of life-threatening injury is that high, and it’s not self-inflicted like mountain climbing or skydiving.
CardinalFan
That would be almost all sports 🙂 Even baseball and tennis. These aren’t considered high impact full contact violent sports but the possibility of life threatening injury is there so there’s an ambulance on site or very very nearby.
But if somebody ratios me it means I don’t have a careeeeeeeeer
Needfuldoer
But when that happens they can write their “I’m being silenced and that’s not fair” book and promote it on the talk show and news interview circuit! That 15 minutes of fame is a money printer!
morleuca
entitled suburbanite bongoes in sports use this when claiming the only reason they lost was because of non-existant transgender biological superiority.
deliverything
Funnily enough, I was looking this up recently; there was a bit of controversy when, two years ago, Alana McLaughlin (who’s trans) beat Celine Provost (who’s cis) in an MMA match, and I recently saw someone referring to the former “brutally KO’ing Celine Provost in a laughably one sided debut fight” — exactly the sort of thing the people complaining about transgender people in sports would love to yell about.
Thing is, aside from it not being a KO (Celine Provost tapped out to a chokehold), it was far from one-sided; it lasted two rounds, mostly just ineffectual punches and kicks, but was ended when Alana McLaughlin (who’s shorter and had a range disadvantage, and had been trying to get in close for the whole match) grappled her opponent and, after about a minute of struggling, managed to get her to submit. Granted, she did seem a little vicious (her opponent was bleeding from the mouth at the end due to rough treatment — I’m not sure why), but that’s maybe because she’s ex-military.
But… some context for all of that. I found Celine Provost on an MMA stats site — https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Celine-Provost-201863 — and it seems she had three previous matches (two amateur and one professional), and lost them all. I’m sure she’d tried her best, but when the oh-so-scary trans woman’s triumph over a cis woman is just something that three cis women have already done, it doesn’t really support the anti-trans argument, does it? Especially if those women did it better…
I didn’t manage to find her other professional bout, but I did watch the amateur ones, both of which seem to have been after her first professional one, and both amateurs beat her more easily than Alana McLaughlin did. Both by grappling, too.
Oh, and something I didn’t mention earlier: Celine Provost was grappled by Alana McLaughlin in the first round too, but escaped. In both of the amateur matches? She didn’t get out of the first grapple.
Just to add: Alana McLaughlin has apparently only had that one match, so I couldn’t directly compare how she would’ve done against other women, which is why I had to indirectly compare her against those other two amateur fighters (who do seem to be better fighters, despite the supposed “disadvantage” of being cis women).
I’m not clear on the rules regarding posting links in comments here, so I’ll drop those three links in a follow-up comment, in case anyone wants to check my claims.
I skipped ahead to the starts of each match for those.
Also, to be fair to her, I think Celine Provost was disadvantaged by the system of weight classes; as she’s so tall, most of her available opponents are going to have more strength for their size, and her main advantage is range, which goes away if they manage to grapple her (which they did).
morleuca
Our latest unfair advantage is in beauty contests apparently.
brute
that was a lot of research and i feel the need to say good job.
You mean non-US football fans for football fans in general?
Dday
In US its called soccer, I guess its pretty unlikely to see a serious riot at a soccer game. It always mystified me the way people around the world can get so worked up about it, here in the US its last sport we would normally associate with beer chuggin sports bros
eh, whatever
It always mystified me the way people around the world can get so worked up about it
Why? The irrational loyalties to geographically close teams is exactly the same. If you mean the game itself, well, both teams spend most of the time almost scoring; if you care about one of them, the suspense is unbearable and the emotional roller-coasters nauseating.
Dday
Ok, I think I can follow, tho the frustratingly low scoring rate also sounds like a big part of why it never quite took off.
Quirdry Tawks
‘Merkins need there to be a WINNER. They see a 0-0 result and say “nothing happened”. Nobody WON. No one got to sack the castle and gang-rape the Queen. Ergo, the whole endeavor was pointless.
We’re largely unable to appreciate the beauty of a spectacular save, or the agony of a blistering shot that went off the crossbar, or to cheer for an underdog who scrapped and bled for every second to hold off the favorite in what was supposed to be a gross mismatch.
Soccer is fucking beautiful.
eh, whatever
Soccer. Association football. The one where you use your foot to kick a ball.
It’s not quintessentially American to be an abusive fuck like Bobby Knight.
… but some days it seems to be quintessentially American to place abusive fucks like Bobby Knight into positions of power and then act as if their results (good or bad) justify the abuses.
Don’t know where you live, bud, but if you think we invented crazy sports fan and/or coach, you just ain’t looking at history enough. I guarantee you depending on where you live and what sports are big around there, there’s some awkward stuff in the past (or even present!) and some more extreme fans that long for the… crazier days of old.
131 thoughts on “Allegiance”
Ana Chronistic
whereas Walky is flanked by fogey?
Mark Sebree
The problem is, I was at Purdue when that reference happened.
Mark Sebree
The coach’s name was Bobby Knight.
clif
Throwing chairs at your players? What could go wrong?
Ray Radlein
To be fair, he also tried choking them from time to time
Vigil247
Oh of course to be fair ???
h3xx
Hey, That would get me to play better. Adversity drives proficiency…
That other Sierra
So I went to HS in the mid-late 90s in Indiana, and that incident is so ingrained that it is the mnemonic we learned to remember the classification of living things. Knight puts chair on floor, gets suspended – Kingdom phylum class order family genus species.
Decidedly Orthogonal
That is not the proper order at all!
NGPZ
CHAIRS?!?!?! WTF?!?!? ?
Tom
Oh yeah, Bobby Knight was as famous for his horrible, horrible temper as much as his winningly abusive coaching techniques.
UrsulaDavina
At this point infamous he chocked a player and use to squeeze player testicles the man’s a monster.
Schpoonman
The clip of BK hitting a player’s chin to make him look him in the eye when he was tearing into him is forever burned into my brain.
NGPZ
That’s sexual abuse!!! ?
Why is this motherfucker not in jail and STAYING in jail? He DANGEROUS. ☠️
UrsulaDavina
He should be in jail but Indiana was winning alot during his tenure. That tends to be the reason in sports. Bill Romanowski should have been sent to jail but was apart of 4 super bowl teams. Romanowski was a linebacker and was the poster child of Roid Rage and was involved in BALCO scandal. The gut crushed his own teammate Marcus Williams eye socket.
NGPZ
FUCKING SHIT does everyone in the Bible Belt fucking worship sports? So much for no idol worship ?
morleuca
I mean, it’s the US. There’s a crazy amount of idol worship of all kinds within the “no idols!” Community
HueSatLight
Feels like someone should mention the Nika riots, might as well be me.
Mark
Yeah, it’s weird, rugby and soccer fans are so quiet and well-behaved….
Daibhid C
“This coach violently abused his players and everyone was cool with it because they were winning.”
“Well, supporters of other sports have been known to get into fights with opposing fans, which usually does result in them going to jail.”
Yes, you’re right. Those are the same.
Tobias
Sports fans literally overthrew the Roman government at one point, and were renowned for giving their champion charioteers all sorts of exemptions from following the law.
danimagoo
Oh it’s not just the Bible Belt. Google Philadelphia Eagles fans and Santa Claus.
elebenty
Less idol worship and more clannishness (with a c, this time). A tribe to belong to, a safe-ish way to direct aggression. (See Bobby Knight comments.)
Also, it’s been a family thing for generations. My great-uncle was born in 1903. Not only did he play basketball, he was heartbroken when they couldn’t have kids. He’d wanted 5, to make his own little team.
Don’t live there now, but I grew up 2 counties from the Indiana border. Many a winter’s night drive the only thing on the radio was high school sneakers squeaking on the ball court.
Roborat
Wow, basketball was already that big? It had only been about 30 years since it was invented when he played.
ProtoMan
I mean, it ain’t just the Bible Belt. If you haven’t seen crazy fans in your neck of the woods, you’re just not looking in the right places. Sports can do things to otherwise normal people.
Hell, forget sports, most any fandom has more… extreme factions that can be crazy if you’re aware of them. If you’re not though, blissful ignorance may be a better way to live.
NGPZ
You mean like those certain MLP groups? The Last Jedi Manifesto folk?
Too late I guess. ?
UrsulaDavina
If your intrested just look up Bobby Knight.
Mark Sebree
Yeah, I was attending Purdue when that happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpekodCQ-U
Steve
Me too!
Angel
that’s pretty tame compared to the looting that happens after one’s fave team ones
And woof linda’s gonna be drinking, this won’t be good (well, entertaining for ‘us’, at least lol)
NGPZ
If they be cheering like Peggy Hill, Satan help us ?
HueSatLight
crosses fingers for flashback of Linda looting following a big win, when she went to school there.
E. Bernhard Warg
Yeah, why was he only fired and not found in a ditch with his lungs full of chairs?
Schpoonman
Is it quintessentially American to be an abusive fuck like Bobby Knight or is that also just a human thing?
Puppeteer Nessus
Sports guy thing
Schpoonman
Ooh, definitely.
Thag Simmons
Modern american sports are probably on the whole less abusive than the norm for the history of human sports.
Schpoonman
It would take me reading the Thagomizer Farside comic only minutes before seeing your name to finally put two and two together. Was wondering why it was always so familiar.
Simulating gladiator games is definitely better than killing people and animals outright, but I’ll always side-eye a sport that requires an ambulance on-site because the possibility of life-threatening injury is that high, and it’s not self-inflicted like mountain climbing or skydiving.
CardinalFan
That would be almost all sports 🙂 Even baseball and tennis. These aren’t considered high impact full contact violent sports but the possibility of life threatening injury is there so there’s an ambulance on site or very very nearby.
John Campbell
I literally do high-impact full-contact combat sports, and it’s way safer than college basketball, say nothing about, gods forbid, football.
58 years and counting, no combat-related deaths!
Armor works.
Seregiel
Or cheerleading! Super dangerous!
Angel
something something toxic masculinity? wonder if it’s ever an issue in women’s basketball or sports team in general.
but these days iwith social media and eveyrone having a smartphone it’d prolly be easier to get cancelled/lose your career over it
brute
getting cancelled is just having a bad week on Twitter and i’m tired of it being this idiotic Boogeyman played up largely by scared white guys.
Taffy
But if somebody ratios me it means I don’t have a careeeeeeeeer
Needfuldoer
But when that happens they can write their “I’m being silenced and that’s not fair” book and promote it on the talk show and news interview circuit! That 15 minutes of fame is a money printer!
morleuca
entitled suburbanite bongoes in sports use this when claiming the only reason they lost was because of non-existant transgender biological superiority.
deliverything
Funnily enough, I was looking this up recently; there was a bit of controversy when, two years ago, Alana McLaughlin (who’s trans) beat Celine Provost (who’s cis) in an MMA match, and I recently saw someone referring to the former “brutally KO’ing Celine Provost in a laughably one sided debut fight” — exactly the sort of thing the people complaining about transgender people in sports would love to yell about.
Thing is, aside from it not being a KO (Celine Provost tapped out to a chokehold), it was far from one-sided; it lasted two rounds, mostly just ineffectual punches and kicks, but was ended when Alana McLaughlin (who’s shorter and had a range disadvantage, and had been trying to get in close for the whole match) grappled her opponent and, after about a minute of struggling, managed to get her to submit. Granted, she did seem a little vicious (her opponent was bleeding from the mouth at the end due to rough treatment — I’m not sure why), but that’s maybe because she’s ex-military.
But… some context for all of that. I found Celine Provost on an MMA stats site — https://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Celine-Provost-201863 — and it seems she had three previous matches (two amateur and one professional), and lost them all. I’m sure she’d tried her best, but when the oh-so-scary trans woman’s triumph over a cis woman is just something that three cis women have already done, it doesn’t really support the anti-trans argument, does it? Especially if those women did it better…
I didn’t manage to find her other professional bout, but I did watch the amateur ones, both of which seem to have been after her first professional one, and both amateurs beat her more easily than Alana McLaughlin did. Both by grappling, too.
Oh, and something I didn’t mention earlier: Celine Provost was grappled by Alana McLaughlin in the first round too, but escaped. In both of the amateur matches? She didn’t get out of the first grapple.
Just to add: Alana McLaughlin has apparently only had that one match, so I couldn’t directly compare how she would’ve done against other women, which is why I had to indirectly compare her against those other two amateur fighters (who do seem to be better fighters, despite the supposed “disadvantage” of being cis women).
I’m not clear on the rules regarding posting links in comments here, so I’ll drop those three links in a follow-up comment, in case anyone wants to check my claims.
deliverything
Wow. That ended up longer than expected. Anyway, those links:
Celine Provost against:
Cornelia Holm: https://youtu.be/F6xuo4Kv7UQ?t=12
Joanne Doyle: https://youtu.be/to-wil7tRvs?t=89
Alana McLaughlin: https://youtu.be/3tFUEXDHIz8?t=888
I skipped ahead to the starts of each match for those.
Also, to be fair to her, I think Celine Provost was disadvantaged by the system of weight classes; as she’s so tall, most of her available opponents are going to have more strength for their size, and her main advantage is range, which goes away if they manage to grapple her (which they did).
morleuca
Our latest unfair advantage is in beauty contests apparently.
brute
that was a lot of research and i feel the need to say good job.
Quirdry Tawks
Writing it off as toxic masculinty is too easy, though. It assigns a convenient label, shrugs and moves along.
What it is, is the result of generations of boys raised to be violent, aggressive, abusive and entitled… i.e. “winners”.
These aren’t the dysfunctions of American society. They are the very functions, working exactly as intended, yielding exactly the desired results.
This is how Trumps are made: by our nurturing of aggression, greed and willful ignorance as if they were virtues. And for what? Fucking SPORTS.
James
You just described toxic masculinity, you realize.
Taffy
Yeah, but in a way that actually DESCRIBES it instead of buzzwording to the finish line.
thejeff
Sure, but that’s why we come up with terms for things, so we don’t have to describe the whole concept every time we want to talk about it.
Taffy
And that’s fine, but once in a while it’s still nice to use a few extra words. Not every time, but sometimes.
Mo
*cough cough* wnba players wronged for being pregnant *cough*
Dday
Americans can get really gross about sports stuff but still pretty mild compared to ⚽️ fans, holy moly football fans scare the crap outta me
NGPZ
You mean non-US football fans for football fans in general?
Dday
In US its called soccer, I guess its pretty unlikely to see a serious riot at a soccer game. It always mystified me the way people around the world can get so worked up about it, here in the US its last sport we would normally associate with beer chuggin sports bros
eh, whatever
Why? The irrational loyalties to geographically close teams is exactly the same. If you mean the game itself, well, both teams spend most of the time almost scoring; if you care about one of them, the suspense is unbearable and the emotional roller-coasters nauseating.
Dday
Ok, I think I can follow, tho the frustratingly low scoring rate also sounds like a big part of why it never quite took off.
Quirdry Tawks
‘Merkins need there to be a WINNER. They see a 0-0 result and say “nothing happened”. Nobody WON. No one got to sack the castle and gang-rape the Queen. Ergo, the whole endeavor was pointless.
We’re largely unable to appreciate the beauty of a spectacular save, or the agony of a blistering shot that went off the crossbar, or to cheer for an underdog who scrapped and bled for every second to hold off the favorite in what was supposed to be a gross mismatch.
Soccer is fucking beautiful.
eh, whatever
Soccer. Association football. The one where you use your foot to kick a ball.
Mark
“I was at a fight the other day and a hockey game broke out.” — someone
Ed Callahan
That was Rodney Dangerfield, who I always respected by the way.
Dday
Impossible! I tell ya he gets no respect around here!
Reltzik
It’s not quintessentially American to be an abusive fuck like Bobby Knight.
… but some days it seems to be quintessentially American to place abusive fucks like Bobby Knight into positions of power and then act as if their results (good or bad) justify the abuses.
ProtoMan
Don’t know where you live, bud, but if you think we invented crazy sports fan and/or coach, you just ain’t looking at history enough. I guarantee you depending on where you live and what sports are big around there, there’s some awkward stuff in the past (or even present!) and some more extreme fans that long for the… crazier days of old.
UrsulaDavina
I understood that reference
Nono
Panel 5 Lucy may be the most politically correct line since Dorothy.
Hey maybe she should try running for president.
Dara
Now I don’t know if the alt-text is riffing on Danny Boy or O Holy Night.
Steve C
Team Danny Boy all the way!
Dara
My band did a cover called Dalek Boy that put a Dalek, a Cyberman, and a Mechanoid all in the studio together
things went about as well as you’d expect ^_^
it was funny once it got going but it took too long to get going and we never could figure out how to shorten it :/