 All right, thanks, everybody, for coming out. I appreciate you guys wearing the face paint. Justine, so my experience with journalism is on the writing side, tell us a little bit about what your job entails, and then tell us how you got interested in this topic. OK, I work for ESPN. I work on off the field issues in sports. So not so much who won the game, but sort of the issues behind the scenes, a lot of crime in courts, a lot of drugs, both recreational and performance enhancing, a lot of corruption, cheating, things like that. OK, and who are your best sources? Well, who are all of your sources and where do most of your stories come from? Well, I'll tell you all the secret ones. Just hand me the spreadsheet. It totally depends on the story. I mean, what's really fun and also challenging about my job is, one day I could be doing athletes in rehab, and then the next day I can be doing document research on employment records of athletes who may have gotten a free ride because they got no-show jobs at some university. So it just totally depends on the story. Good sources to tap are retired athletes who may have some perspective and may be in a position to talk about their experience with a little bit more honesty than people are still totally involved in the game. In your day-to-day work, how often are you coming into contact with fans? Do you have sort of a tip line that people are piping into or are you out there looking at what's happening in social media? Well, I would say it totally depends, because every story is different. Every week is different. So if I'm on a story or an assignment that is taking me to events, I can't help but interact with fans. If I'm working for whatever reason at a ballgame at AT&T Park, I'm on Muny with fans going to work and going home. But it sort of depends. I mean, a lot of my work doesn't involve events. It sort of involves the backstory to events. But we have Twitter, which is certainly the voice of the fan. So I think even without being out and about, you can get a sense of what people are saying and thinking from their couch. Let's talk about the book a little bit. One interesting facet of it is that it feels like there is a little bit of a difference between US fans and how they relate to their teams, maybe, and then European fans. Is there something there culturally that contributes to that or what's your experience? Well, I think that fandom plays out in different ways, depending on culture, depending on geography and demographics. But there are some things that are sort of inherent to everyone. And I talk about universality. Any time I sat there and tried to look for bad behavior, it was easy to find just the way it played out was a little bit different. Everyone associates crazy out of control extreme fans with soccer hooligans and soccer thugs in Europe. Yes, that's one component of it that has certainly been covered and examined and written about. I think in the US, we sort of have our own incarnations of that. If you look at college football fans, for example, that's a religion. There is a really strong passion that sometimes goes into overdrive and erupts into some pretty hideous behavior. So do you feel like there is a difference between the college fan and the pro team fan? I think so. I think so. I mean, it sort of depends what type of events and what type of sports you're talking about. But in all the interviews I've done promoting my book, everyone likes to ask me the exact same things. And one of the questions I get asked is, who are the worst fans? And well, that's not really what I address in my book. And I will tell you that everyone likes to say the worst fans are the fans of the team they hate. So if you're a University of Michigan fan, god, those fans from Ohio State, they're just jerks. Or if you're a Detroit Red Wings fans, those Chicago Black Hawk fans, you forget about them. So there's definitely like a little rivalry, morality shift going on there. But I think there's nothing like college football fans in this country. There's such a tradition, like families revolve around it. I think part of it may be that, yes, you have star players on a college football team or college basketball team. But really, you're a fan of the school and the institution and what that school means to you and what the blue and white of Kentucky means and what their traditions and mascot and symbols mean to you. So that may make people relate a bit differently as well. Rather than ask you what the worst team is, because I know whatever team it is, it's from the New York area, I will ask you. What's your point, Josh? What's the worst sport? You see some pretty bad behavior in youth sports when it comes to parents who are the best, most committed fans of all, because it's their kids. We've all heard like horror story after horror story about helicopter parents, Uber parents, unruly parents, whatever you want to call it. There are a million things to call them. And what is probably really troubling more so about parents acting out on the sidelines is that what they're doing is teaching kids bad sportsmanship. So it's not like they're just acting in a vacuum and so they go to a San Diego Chargers game and they're a little drunk and belligerent. When parents act out on the sidelines and display poor sportsmanship, of course kids are gonna internalize that. And what does that say for the kids themselves, the next generation of sports fans? Right. So that might be the most insidious fan base because of it. That makes a lot of sense. I coached my sons under nine lacrosse team. Are you an obnoxious parent? You can admit it. No, I was a coach. Okay. Did the parents pick on you? They didn't. But the times that they would ask me pointed questions from about 75 yards away, it was kind of disturbing. Absolutely. And that is something I hear over and over again. I'm very interested in fan activity on the lighter side of things like pranks. Are there any great prank stories that you came across in your research? Well, I spend a chapter on student sections, and that's sort of a unique element to college fans. You know, at a big sports school, be it college basketball or college football, there's this area of the stands set aside for students, known as the student section. They get cheaper tickets. They all get to sit together and be loud and do coordinated things. So I spent time in various student sections during college basketball season with these student groups. And they're there, and they cheer on their team, and they're clever, and they're funny, and then sometimes they are totally over the top and obnoxious and say terrible things. And then the question becomes, how do universities control what they're saying? These are public institutions. The kids are pretty much permitted to say what they want through free speech, but it's certainly not really making the university look very good. I'll tell you one story. It's from a while ago, but there's a Bay Area connection. A couple years ago at Cal, the student section decided to prank a USC player. And what happened was this was like right at the birth of the internet, basically. This one guy started IM-ing the player and was posing as a woman named Victoria and was flirting with him and was setting up a date for a post game. Well, when this player got to Cal and got to the arena, all of a sudden the student section started chanting, Victoria, Victoria. And the guy was like, oh my god, what's going on? He was totally thrown off his game. And so in the book, I tracked down the perpetrator of this prank. His name's Steve, but we still like to refer to him as Victoria. And he actually lives in the Bay Area. I don't know why he's not even here tonight. All right, so this is a little bit on the lighter side, but what are some of the worst examples of destructive mayhem that you came across? Well, they are not hard to find. I will take you to, there's one chapter in the book where I sort of examined three big events that all sort of happened at the same time a little bit. And were really significant sort of in the high profile professional sports world. First was looking at what happened with Brian Stowe, the San Francisco Giants fan who was at Dodger Stadium, opening day and was beaten in the parking lot. And it was just an event that grabbed national headlines and got everyone talking about, oh my god, what's wrong with sports fans? And he was beaten within inches of his life. And he's made a remarkable comeback. You guys may be familiar with seeing him throughout the first pitch now with Giants games. And he's still, his life is forever changed. He's brain damaged. He's completely dependent. But there was a point where they didn't know if he would live or die. The other two things I talk about in that sort of pivotal chapter is one, the 2011 football season, another Bay Area incident, that pre-season game where the Raiders played at Candlestick and there were all those fights in the parking lot and two people were shot and it was just chaos. And that sort of got not only the Bay Area teams to revamp some of their security practices, but also the entire National Football League said, we need to clean up our act a little bit. And certain rules were put into place, changes about bringing your bags into the stadium so you can't hide booze, you can't hide weapons. And some of that is security in relation to terrorist threats, but some of it is security in relation to bad fan behavior. And then the other component in that chapter is a little farther back, in 2004 there was an event sort of called Malice at the Palace when the Pacers and Pistons, two NBA teams, were playing and players, it just was this free-for-all where players went into the stands after fans and fans were throwing drinks on the players and it was another thing that captured national headlines and made people reevaluate fan behavior, the relationship of players and fans, security, the NBA changed some of their security policies because of that incident. And a league like the NBA has a situation where their fans are right on the court, right there. What is it, I mean, what is it that happens to a fan where they, I mean, I'm assuming there's not just this incredibly violent segment of the population outside of sports that just happens to be at the game every time. I mean, are these folks that are getting into... Some people would like you to think that, actually. Like, you hear a lot of police chiefs say, oh, it's not our fans, or oh, it's just a couple of bad actors, which seems to me like an excuse, but I totally interrupted your question. No, that's where I'm kind of going with it. I suspect that these people are fairly non-phelonious in their daily lives, right? When they, most of the week, they're probably at least decent and neutral. People not breaking the law and hurting other people. What is it that happens on game day? You know, at the mental level, at the physiological level that turns seemingly regular people into really bad fans. Well, what I took away from my research was that often sports can create this perfect storm. You have this terribly stimulating event with lights, with heat, with maybe you have fireworks, you have lots of people close together. There's like a physical component to being there. And being in a crowd. There's also research that shows that if you're watching violent, aggressive behavior, you may emulate that violent behavior. There's research that shows how people kind of get jacked up from watching sporting events. People are so emotional when it comes to their team. They invest so much of their identity, and it's those people, the highly identified, who are shown to be more prevalent to act out and engage in bizarre and sometimes abusive behaviors. So it's sort of like this marketing conundrum, because the more you love the team, the more potential you have to act out. And if you're a team owner, what do you do? Because those are the people you want. Those are your best fans. Yeah, you want to nurture those fans, but if they're the people with the potential to act like jerks and destroy your stadium, that's not a great combination. Well, I will make sure that as we build our software system, we stop below the criminal inspiration level. Yeah, let me know how you figure out that algorithm. Exactly. All right, so you've got this transformation that's taking place on game day. What about different security approaches that the teams are taking, the stadiums are taking to try to, I mean, how do you deal with that? You mentioned there's the legal side, but there's also in the moment on the ground, you got your security guards and the fight could break out anywhere. How are teams coping with that? Well, it's really hard because as you said, it's a conundrum. You don't want to, you want to nurture your fans. You don't want to let them think they're in a police state and every single move is being watched. But in fact, every single move is being watched with the amount of closed circuit cameras there are today in the stadiums. So it's a challenge. Another challenge to the security front is how much it costs. It's not sexy, it's not gonna make you money back to invest in security. It's the thing that the owner doesn't want to hear, hey, we need to hire more security guards, hey, we need to hire more off-duty police officers because that costs money. And it's a challenge. There's also different security approaches and less is more security or more is more. Like here in the United States, you generally don't see security in riot gear at sporting events. There may be a big event where there are some officers in riot gear staged off to the side of things for post-game. Some horses. Yeah, but you're not gonna generally see them upfront because that may instigate and sort of set up an expectation that, hey, you're supposed to riot. But I went to a soccer game in Mexico a couple months ago and it was sort of a middling event in a regular season, nothing huge at stake. It was not sold out by any means. Police in riot gear everywhere. In the city year when the Giants won one of the most in the World Series last time. Yeah, well, the first thing that played on the news after that Giants win thing, first thing you see is a couch being burned. What's with couches? Why do people? It's a very good question and I'm not sure I have a great answer. I do know that certain college towns have literally passed laws saying no furniture allowed on porches, like no indoor furniture allowed on porches in the name of not having furniture out there that you can burn. And here it's sort of weird to think about that people just spontaneously came up with a couch to burn but in college towns there are crappy couches on porches. I've had people tell me that college students go to Goodwill's and said you got a $25 couch and it's not only couches, it's mattresses too. Weird. Yeah. That is so strange. Going a little bit deeper than just that burning couch on the street, what is it about winning something that you think that your team wins, everybody's happy, congratulating each other. Maybe yelling a little bit and having fun and being happy. What is it that? Why does that shift? Yeah, what flips the switch there? What's going on? I say in the book, if you get a great Christmas present, you don't go and burn down your Christmas tree, it sort of just doesn't follow. But they say there's a hormonal reason actually that if your team wins, your testosterone rises and so you're celebrating winning and you may be inclined to be more aggressive. What about the internet and social media changing the way that fans behave and misbehave? What are some of the big points there? The internet now allows you to reach out directly to the athletes that you are a fan of. You can tweet at a fan. I mean, you can tweet at an athlete and say, you're my guy, or you can say some nasty things. It allows fans to connect directly with other fans. I mentioned this in the book. I know of two Boston Red Sox fans who met on Twitter and got married. They started with the Red Sox in common. It turns out they had a lot more in common. So there are really connective moments and then of course there's some really disconnective moments where it's really easy to be anonymous and nasty and pile on. Is there an element of, so kind of what you're talking about is this, you know, with what happened with Buckeye Nation and some of the other stuff in the book. There's this kind of almost vigilante-ish vibe to it. But on the other side of that, I guess there was someone, I think in Vancouver, who kind of turned it around and used social media to sort of attack, to go after people who had been rioters. Well, social media now is a tool that security officials use. And in the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots, for example, authorities comb through hours and hours and hours of footage to get visuals of the rioters and figure out who they were and track them down. And one component of that was locals got involved and sent stuff in. And some other individuals actually compiled websites that would do that and then they would turn it over to the police. So, you know, if you're in a big crowd of young people who start out celebrating an event, they're gonna be a heck of a lot of selfies taken. And I saw that after the Golden State Warriors won the NBA Finals, I went out to the mission and I was checking out what the crowds were doing. Everyone was wondering, are they gonna riot? This is the hotspot where people riot after the World Series victories. Where couches go to die. Where couches go to die. Where people go to throw tortillas. That was a big thing. This year, people were throwing tortillas at the corner of 16th and Mission. All right. But yeah, everyone has a camera. I mean, I was up there with Periscope. I was doing it too. So, there's tons of social media generated in an event like that and it can be a tool for security. Did you come across any security systems that have software going through the closed circuit stuff on people coming into the stadium? Oh, you mean like facial recognition stuff? I spent time with an entrepreneur and security expert who was sort of test driving a security system for sporting events and what that system is called, DiBus II, was an integrated security system that paired up facial recognition and license plate readers. So, if you were coming to a sporting event, they would check out your car and your license plate that's assuming you're driving to the event and see if you were on any bad guy lists. Be it a warrant out for your arrest, no fly list, whatever database they were working with. And then there was a facial recognition component. There were cameras all around. This was at a polo match, I was actually at. They did a beta test at a polo match in Scottsdale, Arizona. Yeah, because there were a lot of bad actors. At hooligans at the polo match. Well, there were a lot of drunks there. There was a lot of drinking. So, they would run your face upon entry, I believe, through this facial recognition system and see if you matched up any of their photo databases. Again, that is their warrant on this person. Are they on a terrorist list? Things like that. Did the fans, did they know that they were being screened that way? I think there's a picture of it on my website, but I don't remember the exact wording off the top of my head. So, there was some note. I'm just curious as to the, what do they call it, the panopticon effect, right? Where if people know that they're being watched, then they tend to behave, or if they think they're being watched and they tend to behave better. Well, there are all sorts of civil liberties issues with a system like this or concerns, but I think the people behind it do feel like they're actually on safe, legal ground. And I've heard from more and more people that facial recognition is an area that stadium security people would like to go into. And when I was at that conference in Orlando, there were a lot of security devices like that on display. Like you would walk past one part of it in the hallway at the convention and then later on you would see yourself on videotape somewhere else and they would run you through a database. Wow. And they would come and arrest you. Just a tap on the shoulder. We got you for those parking tickets that you never paid. You know, having done all this research, going through what you went through, what do you, A, kind of predict is, are there any big sort of shifts coming up or any big technological developments that'll change things? And what do you hope will happen as someone who loves sports? What would you like to see? Well, in answer to your first question, I think in the next decade maybe, we will see the way we enter stadiums completely change and that will be defined by technology. So right now, if you go to a big sporting event, you're going through some security, you're going through those things, you're being scanned, I think that will continue to get more and more high tech and they would like it to become less obtrusive. So you just walk through a field and you don't know you're being scanned, but you are, that type of thing. And the second question was, what do I hope to see? I'd like to see, yeah, seeing, I mean, spending so much time kind of, you know, wading through all this awful mayhem and misbehavior. I'd like to see rather than only technological steps address the symptoms, I'd like to see something more core taking place. And I actually wrote an essay about this that was published on CNN today. I'd like to see different constituencies and sports come together to sort of reshape the culture and emphasize better sportsmanship and more civility. And I think if you do that at a youth sports level, in terms of we were talking a little bit before about parents, parents being bad influence on the next generation of sports fans, you may be able to affect change if you start early. So it's sort of programs that are woven into little league sports. At the youth level. And I'm guessing and hoping that it focuses a lot on the parents and a little bit on the kids too, but I think, you know. I think that's where you might be able to really make a shift. Interesting. All right. Well, so thanks a ton for taking the time and for writing such a fascinating book. Do you need to wrap up? Yeah, I gotta wrap up. So let's hear it for Justine and John. For me too. And Justine's happy to sign copies of the book in a bag and you have to take more informal questions in a bag.