University of Colorado fined $50,000 offensive chants at BYU

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The chants included expletives and religious slurs directed at BYU, a Utah university founded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Probably worth giving a history lesson but I posted about this widespread issue of racist chanting and racial intimidation of visiting sports teams across Utah college campuses several years ago.

It is a disturbing enough as a non-American when I flick my cable tv to college football (played anywhere in the US) and what I am greeted with is this image:



Initially it looks incredible, hearing the chanting and roars, never seen anything like it. But then the camera pans in and this is what I see...


Now just imagine an football team made up 90-100% young black men running onto the field. these young men who put their bodies and heads on the line like modern day gladiators. And indeed many will develop neurological brain damage all in the name of entertaining the massive screaming crowds. And the optics are clear. the players are there to entertain but they don't live in the same America as the crowd. Illustrates a deep rooted social division that runs across America.

So imagine now if you are a visiting team in a local stadium and said college crowd uses racial slurs booming across the stadium. I don't need to describe the psychological impact on the players. It's the same psychological impact international soccer players experience in front of European crowds screaming racial slurs.

But Utah colleges and high schools this has been reported more frequently > other college campus sports in both men's and women's sports events. I believe this is a cultural problem specific to Utah due to the homogenous nature of the state and influence of Mormon church on the way people think in that state.

If you are a black visiting sports person about to play in a Utah college (pick any sport, any gender) then you probably in all likelihood will mentally prepare to hear racial slurs. But in the era of "free speech" and supporting your team, the culprits just see their offensive chanting as part of "sport culture" they learned from watching their own parents.

In the posted article, it was fans from Colorado yelling slurs at a team from Utah

Just imagine 70,000 people doing a Nazi salute and it not going viral. I can't. The first photo is from a game in Michigan the second photo appears to be from a game in Texas. Maybe Michigan was playing Texas, and the cameras panned to the Texas section. That is my problem with the second photo, I have no context

It maybe a sports thing, but more infringement of the right to free speech, seem to be in our future. No more 1st amendment, to. the US constitution..perhaps?

the photos were to illustrate what I see in every US college football match on cable tv
70,000 white fans
22 black football players

It reminds me of how Roman gladiators must have felt fighting in front of screaming masses in a colosseum crowd.
the racial slurs just make things much worse...

Thanks for the clarification.

I did some digging and I think I know why you find the behavior of American sports fans so odd.
Australian fans are as passionate if not more so for their favorite teams then fans anywhere else but they are noted for not making it personal.

And it's not just men's collegiate sports
https://www.espn.com.au/college-sports/ ... all-player
Often (as above) organisers rarely address the root of the problem and so heckling continues.

But yes I acknowledge sports fans in Australia also get overly passionate resorting to heckling and yes, a players ethnicity is "low hanging fruit" and an easy way to distract/throw them of their game.

What you see are Texas fans, that gesture is an expression of support for the Longhorns. It has nothing to do with race.

I also think it foolish to simply assume that black football players are disadvantaged. Some are and some aren't. The whole gladiator thing doesn't really apply to the extent you seem to be suggesting. Racism isn't that big a problem in American football. BTW HBCUs have essentially the same football culture as white schools like UT or UM. Does that really change anything?

OTOH $50K is a pitifully small fine for that sort of harassment. I would think 7 figures and they should have forfeited except that would deprive the BYU players of a good game. Also, BYU gets respect in football. They've produced a lot of NFLers, mostly Pacific Islander but even some whites.

Race is most definitely a big factor in American culture, but unless you're very knowledgeable, as a foreigner you're likely to get it wrong. I could easily say that it's my impression that black people in Australia are mostly just swept under the rug, but I'm certain an Australian would take exception to my saying that. See what I'm saying?

BTW I looked at the Longhorns roster and it appears about 25% white. Whites being in a minority on a University football team is probably typical. In the US it's basically expected and not much commented on. What I find more noteworthy is how far fewer African-American players are in Major League Baseball than 40-50 years ago.

BYU is probably a special case, they probably have a very high percentage of Pacific Islanders although I didn't bother looking.

After the Elon Musk “gesture” every raised hand is in interpreted as a nazi salute somewhere thus implicating 90+ percent of innocent and typical gestures.

NFL evolved from British rugby, we have rugby league, soccer and Australian rules football (AFL) in Australia. Fun fact, Soccer is predominantly followed by 1st generation migrants from the UK and Europe (particularly Italians and Greeks). Rugby and AFL are Aussie. there is a large number of pacific islanders in rugby while AFL has many indigenous Australians.

I acknowledge my understanding of US NFL/gridiron culture is not strong, and frankly I have never been interested in team sports much. But I do understand crowd behaviour/passion and psychological impact of chanting slurs on players (homophobic or racist).

In school I played Australians rules football (it was mandatory for school boys up to 12) and did used to follow the Australian football league (AFL) and Victorian Football league (VFL). there were three incidents I recall vividly. two involving indigenous players Nicky winmar and Adam Goodes. Both players were highly skilled (Goodes won Australian of the year and was a Australian media celebrity on par with Lebron James in US basketball) but their careers ended prematurely due to mental breakdown from crowds chanting racial slurs at every game, winmar became alcoholic and needed rehabilitation, later in life he has numerous run ins with the police and severe health issues. Goodes vanished from public life immediately after retirement. His close friends reported he was going through depression. A man who should have been enjoying a prominent public life due to his incredible media profile became a recluse.

And finally there was a talented South Sudanese player named Majak Daw who was one of the first Africans to play AFL some 15 years ago. Daw experienced crowds chanting racist names which reverberated in AFL stadiums he played.
In 2018 he jumped of Bolte bridge in an attempt to end his life. He had many personal issues in his life but the impact of name calling also got into his head.

So your comment "Racism isn't that big a problem in American football" isn't really something you are qualified to talk about. I've read personal testimonies of US footballers, basketballers and even women's volleyball. I would suggest based on their lived experience, racist chanting does have a psychological impact on their lives. the current Caitlin Clark matter in US women's basketball is also an issue for any black female player who plays against Clark having booing white crowds to deal with.

I agree with what you say about WNBA. I don't know much about their fan culture except that its makeup is probably different from NBA and if I were to say anything more I'd get into trouble. I suspect anyone acting that way at a WNBA game is not part of their mainstream fan base but rather a troublemaker who went to the game in order to act out. Nothing to do with racism, but there have also been incidents of people throwing dildos onto the court (I won't call them "fans" because again I don't think they are real WNBA fans). Come to think of it, even some of what appears to be race-based harassment is probably more inspired by attitudes about gender rather than race.

I still maintain that none of the sort of racist behavior you described at AFL and rugby matches occurs at NFL games.

There has been some racist behavior at baseball games, but mostly in Boston. At many other ballparks, that would earn you considerable opprobrium from other fans and you might be ejected or even taken into custody by police. Baseball games are heavily policed and hooliganism isn't tolerated, at least not in the major leagues.

EDIT my NFL experience is limited to attending Ravens home games. What I say is based on what I've experienced there. Maybe stuff happens at other venues that I haven't been exposed to.

Well with all due respect f**k The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Booo! I stick my tounge out and make the spit noise at them. And well they can stick their heads between their own asses, I'll paint half my face blue and cry Freedom at them. Sorry got carried away but that is what I think of them, I just don't really like extremists that can't understand I already know about Jesus and I still say no thank you to their religion, like leave me alone quit stopping by when I am at a bus stop waiting to go to work to give me a stupid Jesus pamphlet I will definitely just put in the garbage can where it belongs, or maybe I'll just burn it in front of you so you understand I said NO!. so stop coming to my door, next time I will blast satan music and come to the door naked. Idk maybe I should actually threaten that if it happens again.

Thanks to Trump and project 2025 that has a lot more people behind it than just Trump, like as awful as Trump is...kind of looking like hes still a pawn for the wealthy, even though he is part of the wealthy...but thats how they get em. If you're already poor whats anyone gonna do take your wealth? but if you grew up wealthy the idea of 'no money' is like probably extremly horriyfing not quite so scary if your used to it I guess.. Well a lot of us living paycheck to paycheck deal with that everyday so excuse us if we aren't so sympathetic when you complain about losing one of your many houses or wrecked one of your fancy cars....like cool who cares when you have enough money to replace all that s**t 10X times, whearas for us down here on earth who aren't part of the wealthy bubble the one car breaking down can be pretty devastating. And we can't buy a house cause all the wealthy a**holes are buying them up to use for Airbnb. I suppose JD Vance would want us to be more 'thankful' well you know what f**k you JD Vance. LIke have you seen the show Bob's Burger, me and my boyfriend are even worse off than that. Idk maybe we're as worse off as Bobs friend who always comes in for the special burger.

And yeah, capitalism is stupid worst curse the world has ever had. it just encourages greed and all the worst possible parts of humanity capitalism is so bad the only way for it to function is if it is reigned in by a few more socialist ideas, but if we just got rid of capitalism then maybe we could finally actually focus on building a world wide society so maybe we can have the tech to travel to other planets before the sun blows up and destroys earth with it, but MAGA and the make america and the world sh***y party would rather run all the reasources into the ground till catastrophe before we even can form an escape plan, they are set on the planet dying before we ever get the tech to move on like they mean to destroy it by ignoring climate change, and well in a few years its really not going to be a fun time but whatever....sweep the elephant under the rug I guess

Well regarding the NBA, Spike Lee sits in the front row of spectators at many if not most NY Knickerbocker games. Spike Lee is somebody people cater to. If he saw any sort of racist behavior on the part of white spectators he'd see to it they got sorted ASAP.

I will speak to some systemic racism in that white NFLers get much more attention from the media. I recall the season-opening game between the Ravens and the Buffalo Bills (extra credit — who here can tell me what a "bill" is?) anyway the Ravens were projected to win, they have a black quarterback who speaks AAVE and the Bills have a white quarterback who's married to a Hollywood star. I happened to fall asleep watching that game, at which time the Ravens were winning. I woke up at the end and could hear the announcers getting all excited about the outcome and I know immediately what had happened. The announcers knew that the nationwide audience's sympathies were with Buffalo, largely because they identify with the Buffalo quarterback. That quarterback gets endorsements for products advertised nationwide whereas the Baltimore quarterback is lucky to get an endorsement deal for the odd local bank (cultural note: the US has many "local" banks, I don't think this really exists anywhere else in the world). BTW the Baltimore quarterback is actually rated higher than the Buffalo quarterback.

The national media don't seem bothered about glaring bias in this aspect of sports broadcasting. White athletes and mixed-race or light-complexioned athletes who speak standard American English get the preference over black athletes who speak AAVE.