After a heated and competitive game on monday night between the Packers and Bears, an unfortunate incident took place between Nick Collins and a fan. Fox6 news in Milwaukee reported that, “Collins was provoked by a fan who spat his way and called him a racist expletive, promoting Collins to “go crazy” and “attack”. The station reportedly has video of the incident that can’t be shown until Tuesday due to NFL guidelines.” (http://twitter.com/fox6sports).
This incident is a prime example of sporting competition getting out of hand in today’s game. In this case it seems as if both the fan and athlete should be blamed for some wrongdoing. The fan obviously provoked Collins into action with his inappropriate conduct and language. Collins, however, should be able to maintain his composure in instances such as this one. He is a player representing the National Football League and must learn to simply ignore these situations. Every athlete is going to experience some type of heckling and in most cases fans will cross lines they should not, but athletes experience this at every level and Collins should have learned how to handle this by now.
This incident does bring up an interesting question dealing with the conduct of fans. Collins will most likely be fined for his actions, but past getting beat up by an NFL football player the fan will likely avoid any disciplinary action. Fans are shocked whenever players interact with fans (Ron Artest at the Palace or more recently Brandon Jacobs), but fans have to realize that athletes are people also and they should be treated with respect. It will be interesting to see the details of this story when the video is released tomorrow, but either way both players and fans need to start acting in a respectable, humane manner.
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