Once again, the nation’s attention is focused on Philadelphia for their behaviour in Philadelphia after their Super Bowl LII win.
It’s not positive attention either as fans and media in Canada and America chastise them for their behaviour all through the night. However, we’re here to point out that Philly gets a bad rap. Even last night, there was a ‘riot’ at the University of Massachusetts Amherst after the Patroits loss that didn’t get nearly as much attention as the party in the streets of Philly.
Comparing the numbers between the two, there were six arrests made in a 2,000 person gathering at UMass while only three were arrested in all of Philadelphia.
That may seem shocking, especially given that a reported 100,000 people took to the streets.
We spoke to TSN’s Frank Seravalli, who was born and raised in Philadelphia and has covered sports there for many years.
“They never stop showing up, they never stop caring. Yea, they get a little rowdy, but I think in a lot of ways, the reputation that they have is unfair…
There have been some incidents between the Dodgers and Giants – fans have died there. We haven’t seen anything like that in Philly, yet it’s always known as the rowdiest place to be. I was cracking up watching a newscast in Minneapolis saying like, “Don’t wear Vikings colours” as if it’s a gang coming there. You’re thinking to yourself, we’re not savages, we’re just really passionate. At times, some Philly fans are overserved but that would be the case anywhere…
I’ve seen some statistics recently where they track the number of arrests per game by police and the Eagles are actually in the bottom third of the league.”
Frank’s not wrong either. According to the Washington Post, from 2011-2015, the top five teams in terms of arrests per game were the Chargers, Giants, Jets, Raiders and Steelers.
Even in the NFC Championship, where most of the talk of Philadelphia fans started, there were no arrests made in the celebration. Say what you will about lenient police or any other influence, but the stats just don’t back up a lot of the reputation that sports fans in Philadelphia are tagged with. The videos definitely back it up, but even in those, it’s silliness, some property damage and a lot of reckless behaviour, but it doesn’t seem to be violent.
So when you see some Philly fans do some of the disgusting things they did last night (We’re thinking about this one in particular), it doesn’t mean they’re the worst fans. They’re a passionate bunch who know where the line seems to be.
Even in Canada, several Canadian cities have rioted after hockey games (Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver), Toronto has had several recent reckless events like the fan who threw a beer a player during an ongoing play in baseball, the time they rained down beers from the 500 level because of a call that didn’t go their way in what eventually became the bat flip game and many others.
"I think we’ve all had an experience where you’ve seen something that’s offside at a game. I think for whatever reason, the fans in Philly have become this easy National story with pointing back to snowballs at Santa or throwing batteries at JD Drew at a Phillies game, go down the list, they’re the ones that everyone talks about."
The point of this is that there were some bad apples partying in the streets of Philly yesterday, but most cities have those same couple knuckleheads. For some reason, they all don’t get the same treatment that Philadelphia fans do in the national media.
