Some Raiders fans are really quite pleasant.

For the past two years, the NFL has apparently been sending undercover rival fans into stadiums to goad home fans into starting fights so Roger Goodell and his army of peacekeepers could weed out the sh*tty fans. Somewhere Bryan Stow’s family is like, “WTF Bud Selig?”

The fans that were busted picking fights and acting a fool, as my friend Ludacris would say, received lifetime bans from NFL games, because little Timmy and Sally Everyperson need to have a good time watching guys kick the piss out of each other on a field every Sunday.

But don’t worry, guys who like getting hammered and picking fights to make yourselves feel better about your awful lives. The NFL is giving you all a second chance by letting you take an online test to make sure you’ve learned your lessons.

“We’re not trying to squash anyone’s passion. We’re just trying to say don’t be violent,” said Dr. Ari Novick, the Californian who’s the brains behind the program.

Requirements will vary depending on the stadium, but most of the time the stadium louts will have to pass the test before being allowed back in, he said.

The classes are an effort to stem the rising tide of ugly stadium behavior that has included everything from bare-knuckle brawls to lewd Jets fans who screamed obscenities at women until they exposed their breasts in a rude Gate D tradition at the old Giants Stadium. (Via the New York Post)

The test also costs $75, so I wouldn’t be too shocked if a few people end up failing them two or three or 12 times before they’re allowed back, if you know what I mean.

Actually, the NFL doesn’t get any of the money. For each person who takes the test, Mothers Against Drunk Driving gets $10 and the HERO Campaign gets another $10. The other $55? Oh, it goes in Dr. Novick’s pocket. How convenient of an idea.

Nobody in the NFL knows how to handle the fights and shootings that went down Saturday at Candlestick Park. Yesterday, 49ers owner Jed York used them as an excuse to push the 18-game season, because “people without season tickets” were the cause of violence. Today, Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the NFL and local police “strongly support” ending the annual preseason contest altogether.

Though the two teams haven’t told each other that they don’t want to play the game any more, the NFL source said that there is no way the game will be played next year, the year after and maybe longer than that.

It’s likely that the discontinuation of the annual games won’t be announced—the match-up will just disappear from the preseason schedules of both teams next year (when it was due to be held in Oakland) and will not re-appear.

Is it weird to anyone else that “more football” and “no football” are the only two plans of action?

As it was astutely pointed out by Chris Chase over at Shutdown Corner, a guy in Raiders gear shot a guy in an anti-49ers shirt, so is there a problem with 49ers fans and Raiders fans or just sports fans in metropolitan California? Is taking football away from football fans the answer? Does every away team who shows up and witnesses fan violence have to leave forever? Do we build an invisible, semipermeable dome over San Francisco, or play 49ers games in a walled-off high-rise for the rich citizens?

That’s an exaggeration, obviously, but how hard is it for somebody in the NFL front office to say “hey, maybe we shouldn’t feed these guys beer all day and let them roam around unsupervised in the parking lots”? I don’t feel comfortable thinking we need a police escort every time we’re in public, but Jesus, it’s better than dying for football.

Saturday’s preseason NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders involved fights in the stands, two parking lot shootings and a beaten and unconscious in a Candlestick Park bathroom. Philly sports fans took the opportunity to say “YOU GUYS ALWAYS TALK ABOUT PHILLY FANS BUT DERP” and everyone else approached it from a place somewhere between disappointment and disbelief. The beating of Bryan Stow outside Dodger Stadium on baseball’s Opening Day has cast a national spotlight on irrational fan behavior, with the question always boiling down to, “How does this kind of thing happen?”

49ers owner Jed York has decided to become the Biggest Dick You’ll Read About Today by answering that question — he believes there is not enough football, and is willing to use fan shootings as an excuse to push for a longer season. From a horrible interview with KNBR by way of the Sacramento Bee and Pro Football Talk:

“I think when you have a preseason game, when you don’t have your regular-season ticket holders coming to a game, I think that plays a big factor into it,” York said. “I think that’s another reason why the NFL is looking at, you know, trying to revamp the preseason schedule.”

PFT explains why this is horrid in the simplest terms.

The violence at Candlestick Park on Saturday is a time to have serious conversations across the league about how to keep fans safe, not a time to make specious arguments in favor of an 18-game season.

…leaving everyone else free to ask, “How f**king disconnected are you from real life that you think ‘letting poorer people attend the football games’ is the reason why people are shooting each other and beating each other to death in your parking lot?” Extending the season to limit the amount of people without season tickets in your stands is specious, sure, but it’s also a huge statement on class difference, the condescending attitude of owners claiming to be part of a system and only looking out for themselves, and just the biggest pile of sh*t-smelling ignorance ever.

So in meaner terms, do what Pro Football Talk suggested. Really think about how to protect and take care of these people, and don’t wait a tossed battery, a Mountain Dew bottle full of Big Dawg’s acid piss or a fan dying from gunshot wounds to show up and justify your agenda.

[h/t Jimmy Traina]

Foul balls — people who want them, and the fatter, meaner people who end up taking them — have become an important topic of discussion at With Leather. The latest talking point comes to us from the Tampa Bay Rays/Oakland Athletics game at Tropicana Field on Saturday night, and features a “best of” selection of foul ball atrocities: grown men fighting, ejections, children left desperately yearning and a security guard making tough calls like he’s an actual law enforcement agent.

The Rays TV broadcast team of Dewayne Staats, Brian Anderson, and Todd Kalas tell the story, by way of Sports Grid:

I think that’s the best solution I’ve ever seen to grown men battling each other in a trash can. Just leave the ball in the trash and don’t let anybody get it. It gets better when you watch the video and see the people sitting around telling their best AW MAN HERE’S WHAT I SHOULDA SAID TO HIM versions of the story while the Rays just flounder (fish reference) and get shut out. I was hoping some a-hole would try to outsmart the security guy by picking up the entire trash can and walking away with it.

Lesson learned, again: Foul balls are not important enough for you to be acting like this.

Back in April I put up a video of Real Madrid winning the Copa del Rey, then promptly dropping and running over it with a double-decker bus. That’s the sort of mishap that mishappens once in a lifetime, right? Well, it turns out Real Madrid is really into committing vehicular manslaughter on the things they love, because now they’ve dropped a woman and run over her with a golf cart.

A rundown of events (cough) via Brooks Peck at Dirty Tackle:

While the players were being transported around the [UCLA] campus, one female fan decided to bum-rush one of the moving carts. She apparently didn’t consider the science of what happens when a person runs directly into a moving golf cart, because she got run over. The cart stopped momentarily before zooming off on its merry way.

The best part is the Hit And Run, because the guy filming just sort of goes “heh” and everyone moves on with their lives. No additional information is known about the victim at this time, but I’ve got a couple of working theories:

1. The woman was trying to commit suicide in the most uptight, Caucasian way possible (via a golf cart carrying a soccer team on a California college campus).
2. The woman was simply blind and jogging in the wrong direction.
3. The woman is Kevin James, and this is one of 800 similar jokes in his next movie.

Regardless, this is the least alert soccer team of all time. I hope you guys never crash your plane in the Andes Mountains, you’ll be dead within 20 minutes.

Boomshakalaka! The nail in the coffin?

Sports

The NBA Finals: 10 Points To Watch - Point one, how many nicknames for Dirk Notwitzki can you come up with while watching? Sports writers can come up with INFINITY. Point two, when writing a recap of the games, how many times can you point out that the Heat seem like nice guys, even though they’re being portrayed as the league’s villains? [Smoking Section]

World’s First BMX Triple Backflip - Witness a first for action sports. Of course, saying “action sports” is like saying “jump diving,” but this is pretty cool. I think BMX clips, win or fail, are 90% people going AOOHHHHH. [Buzzfeed]

Dad Drops His Daughter to Catch Foul Ball - We would’ve covered this on Monday, but if you haven’t seen it yet, watch as this dumb jerk completely sacrifices his kid to go for a foul ball. Maybe this is one kid that won’t grow up yelling BALL, BALL, BALL, BALL, BALL at players during games. [Fark]

Productive Outs - A baseball blog. I call them Baseblogs™! And I’m totally not linking it here just because they’ve got an interview with me going up in a couple of hours. Nope! [ProductiveOuts]

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