The Shifting of Blame

The stadium was half filled with anticipation for the girls soccer team to start.  I took a seat in the stands to the left of me sat about 6 of hopeful onlooking parents.  I knew they were parents due to the line of questions they were asking about "how was your daughter was doing in school and how is she enjoying the soccer team".  The whole group to my right were dressed in Aggie T shirt with a pair of shorts because it was a hot day.

5 minutes before the game was about to begin, a group of 10 college students entered the complex and took a seat to the right.  Most of them dressed in Aggie T-shirts and either shorts or jeans.  The group consisted of 6 girls and 4 guys.  Most of them looked half asleep most likely suffering a hangover, since the game was being held midday Saturday.  The topic of discussion between the college students were about last night events and all the different parties they went to.  When the game started the college students was cheerful and enthusiastic about the team.  This was evident by the clapping and cheering and the beginning of the game.

Within, the first 8 minutes of the game, the ref blew his whistle and rewarded the opposing team a free kick.  This resulted in a goal for the opposing team.  After seeing this play, two of the college guys sitting next to me went ecstatic and made nasty comments about the ref saying " maybe you should get your eyes fixed and how much are they paying you."  The parents also sitting next to me were quite mad about the recent events.  One of the fathers was now on his feet joining the 2 male college student in there banter.  The wife of the of the angered father was trying to calm him down and make him stop yelling.  The 2 college guys also stopped after a while, i believe due to the influence of the girls sitting next to them.  This occurred several times during the game,  whenever the ref made a call that didn't benefit the the girls playing, the fans would get anger and try and put down the ref.

However, when the ref made a call that benefited the players the people who were talking bad about the ref started to cheer him saying things like "good call ref".  I think the ref in this situation is an escape goat.  An interesting aspect i learned after going to a couple of there games, that the crowd attitude toward the ref can for-tell the score of the game.  If the crowd was nice to the ref they were most likely winning would be appreciative of the ref, but if the the crowd is negative toward of the ref they were most likely loosing.

At half-time the Aggies were losing by a large margin.  Seven of the 10 college student left at half time.  The talk between 4 of them was "it is  not worth watching a losing team".  Additionally, two of them said they had somewhere to be and errands to run.  The other 3 wanted to stay and talk to the players after the game so they were going to stick around.  Meanwhile, the parents had no such talk or discussion about the leaving the game early.  I did overheard the parents talk about the coaching staff of the soccer team.  It seemed the parents contribute the potential loss to the coaching staff and not a single blame based on any of the players, which i thought was interesting.

(week 2)