Bizarre Social Science Result of the Day

Via Tyler Cowen, Daniel Rees "College Football Games and Crime". The main finding is that college football leads to crime:

For instance, assaults increase by about 9% when a community hosts a college football game, vandalism increases by about 18%, and DUIs increase by about 13%. We also find evidence that upsets result in larger increases in crime than games that do not produce an upset. For instance, an upset loss at home is associated with a 112% increase in assaults and a 61% increase in vandalism. We discuss these results in the context of psychological theories of fan aggression.

Strange but, it seems, true.

Comments

We discuss these results in the context of psychological theories of fan aggression.

We might also want to discuss the consumption of alcohol in this context as well.....

Posted by Tiparillo | January 17, 2008 1:24 PM

Not a single mention of Ohio State in the study. That makes me want to set a couch on fire.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | January 17, 2008 1:25 PM

We might also want to discuss the consumption of alcohol in this context as well.....

Yeah, not sure why you'd find this to be strange. It's a pretty straight line from teh booze

Posted by Rob | January 17, 2008 1:28 PM

Exactly. Name a place where a ton of alcohol is consumed by thousands of 18-24 year old males and you'll see an increase in violence. Not surprising in the least.

Posted by Ryan | January 17, 2008 1:28 PM

This result probably doesn't seem strange to anyone who went to a school with a big time athletic program. Murray Sperber, Bob Knight's bête noire at Indiana, wrote a very good book on the subject.

That said, college sports are a hell of a lot of fun, for the same reasons they're connected to bad social indicators-- camaraderie plus alcohol multiplied by population density.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | January 17, 2008 1:32 PM

Maybe Matt is being ironic. Given the alcohol, exponential population spike, proximity, and emotional stress these numbers might suggest relative peace.

Posted by ao | January 17, 2008 1:34 PM

So am I supposed to infer that angry macho drunks are somehow correlated with violence?

Posted by Chuck | January 17, 2008 1:38 PM

You know what I've always been curious about? The 1994 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver. Despite being quite young and not all that familiar with hockey, I remember being struck by them at the time because the Canucks were the West's 7th seed and lost to the Rangers, the NHL's best team, on the road. Yet there were riots. Actually, now that I think about this, I can't believe I've never asked my Vancouverite roommate about it.

Perhaps it's the higher alcohol content of Canadian beer relative to ours? Whatever, it was still weird. And I know it's not college football, but since it's Canada I figure the intensity of fandom is kind of similar.

Posted by jhupp | January 17, 2008 1:41 PM

I don't see anything strange about this study at all. I suspect violence goes up during happy hour, too.

Posted by Shinyk | January 17, 2008 1:45 PM

He, is this going to 'true' in the sense that it's actually real, or is it going to be 'true' in the sense that a lot of people hear it and believe it. I'm still running into idiots who cite that 'superbowls make men beat their wives' study long after it's been discredited.

Posted by soullite | January 17, 2008 1:45 PM

Another study finds that holiday family gatherings lead to crime.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | January 17, 2008 1:46 PM

I guess it doesn't really get rowdy when Harvard hosts Yale? I'll have to hope along with ao that MY is joking.

Posted by MBG | January 17, 2008 1:47 PM

I think congress should act. They need to get tough on crime. Ban College Football Now!

Posted by cheflovesbeer | January 17, 2008 1:49 PM

It's not really that strange, didn't they have alcohol at Harvard?

Posted by AJ | January 17, 2008 2:03 PM

It's not really that strange, didn't they have alcohol at Harvard?

My son, a non-drinker who went there a couple of years after Matt, says yes. He said he believed policy was to put athletes in first-floor dorms so they wouldn't be injured falling down stairs.

Posted by David in NY | January 17, 2008 2:35 PM

Strange? Seriously?

I witnessed a crowd turn over a car and set it on fire at Ohio State in 1997. And that was after a win!

It's not reasonable to assume that big sports events cause violence by themselves, especially with booze in attendance, but can we at least stop assuming that sports are a wellspring of only good social values?

Posted by Chris | January 17, 2008 2:53 PM

Strange? Seriously?

I witnessed a crowd turn over a car and set it on fire at Ohio State in 1997. And that was after a win!

It's not reasonable to assume that big sports events cause violence or crime by themselves, especially with booze in attendance, but can we at least stop assuming that sports are a wellspring of only good social values?

Posted by Chris | January 17, 2008 2:54 PM

This doesn't seem strange at all to me, either. Aside from the alcohol consumption, physical violence is obviously one of the attractions of football games for many--but not all--football fans (in other words it's a feature not a bug). Football allows a legitimization of otherwise unacceptable violence, as soccer does, on a more intense level, for English soccer hooligans. In any case, it's pretty obvious that violence and sports are hardly strangers.

Posted by Doug | January 17, 2008 3:28 PM

Four years at Harvard, and you never wondered why the football stadium is in Allston, or why Allston looks like it does?

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | January 17, 2008 3:33 PM

Alcohol consumption would seem to be main culprit in the normal increase, but as far as the spike in assualts during upsets, it would seem to be a bit more complicated. My theory would be that because there's an expectation of riots to occur in these situations, it severely lowers the inhibitions of the participants (who may feel that this is a more socially acceptable situation for violence) and invites those who just want cause trouble. I knew a guy who would drive down to College Park for every big Maryland basketball game (University of Maryland has possibly the worst post-game rioting problem in the nation) just because he knew that there would be a riot afterwards that would let him do stuff like break people's car windshields and get into fights.

Posted by Michael T Sweeney | January 17, 2008 3:35 PM

In my neck of the woods, university fooball games are attended mostly by families driving in their cars, vans and RVs to the game from all-over the state and beyond. But among 110,000 attendees there could be 10,000 heavily inebriated bad apples. In a peaceful community like a sleepy college town it does not make much to double the number of assaults etc. (although Friday night in our fraternity row is something from which you would like to keep your daughters away).

In a standard European soccer game, fans are mostly young men adorned with scarfs of their team, coalescing into tribal crowds.

Historically, fans of different horse-racing teams in Constantinopole had many bloody riots. Gladiator fights were more peaceful by comparison.

Posted by piotr | January 17, 2008 3:42 PM

Alcohol is probably part of the story, but I think there's more to it. I have a feeling that sports are more similar to ethnic conflict than to a beer fest. Fans bind their identity to their team and therefore experience a loss as personal injury or injustice. Their emotional energy is invested in something over which they have no control and the game itself, being so simply physical and quantifiable, can produce only victors and the defeated, free of pesky shades of gray. If that's not a recipe for violence, I don't know what is.

Posted by Jocie Fong | January 17, 2008 3:49 PM

For such a bright, well educated, curious guy, you sure do have some funny holes in your knowledge of the way world works.

Posted by ostap | January 17, 2008 3:55 PM

For instance, an upset loss at home is associated with a 112% increase in assaults and a 61% increase in vandalism.

Oh, you mean in Columbus, OH.

At first, I thought this was a national study.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | January 17, 2008 4:11 PM

Since when is this news? Also, Seanbaby said it better.

http://seanbaby.com/news/riot.htm

Posted by Nick | January 17, 2008 4:39 PM

That's nothing compared to the increase violence after soccer games in England in the 1970s-1980s.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 17, 2008 5:26 PM

You guys making fun of Harvard need to read what the Boston Police say about The Game. You would think it was a Big Ten school if you listened to them complain about public urination.

And this is even after doing a million things to try to cut down on the consumption of alcohol at The Game (banning kegs, requiring limited #s of drink tickets).

The consensus is that The Game is much more fun at Yale.

Boston police were surprised to find an estimated 10,000 Yale and Harvard students drinking hard alcohol and beer and, in some cases, urinating in public, Boston Police Captain William Evans said.

"We were misled into thinking that this was a low-scale event. We were surprised at how many people were there," Evans said. "When students are continually going to the hospital, we have a problem."

Police said they were dismayed to find students urinating on the fence that separates Ohiri Field from a residential neighborhood.

"It can't get much worse," Evans said. "Nobody had control of this."

Boston Police told Aaron Lambert '06 and Kate Crandall '06 that they would be summoned to court for underage drinking and other charges. Lambert said he was charged with underage drinking and presenting fake identification to a police officer. Although he said both offenses occurred, Lambert said he finds the situation "ridiculous."

"It's a tailgate; people are drinking, everyone's drinking," Lambert said. "For Harvard or whoever to put police in the middle of a tailgate, it's kind of foolish."

Crandall, a staff reporter for the Yale Daily News, declined to comment.

Boston police wrote down the names of at least 32 underage drinkers to give to their universities for punishment and also ejected 29 students from the tailgate for underage drinking. In addition, Boston police arrested two non-student tailgaters for cocaine possession.

Police believe the mass consumption of hard liquor instead of the beer provided for free by the liquor distributor accounted for an "alarming" number of hospitalizations, Evans said. At future games in Cambridge, police may restrict the number of people allowed into the tailgate and impose a ban on all hard alcohol but allow beer, Evans said.

"There's no need for that hard stuff at a party for a football game," Evans said. "That's what drives people to the hospital."

Though both Boston and Harvard police officers confiscated false identification cards and ejected underage drinkers from the tailgate, Harvard Police Capt. Steven Catalono said Harvard police made no student arrests because officers were instructed to show "the utmost restraint."

"We could have easily made hundreds of arrests if we wanted to," Catalano said. "But instead we chose to utilize the internal disciplinary systems at each school."

Evans said he was led to believe students would only consume beer by the distributor and would not bring in hard alcohol. But the Massachusetts state law the police were enforcing for the tailgate allowed each person to carry one gallon of hard alcohol.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/12432

Posted by john doe | January 17, 2008 5:26 PM

Remember the Michael Jordan Riots in Chicago after the Bulls won the NBA title in 1992 and 1993? (For unexplained reasons, there wasn't one in 1991). They were pretty massive. Most of the rioters were the usual suspects, but a friend of mine who lived in a high rise on Michigan Avenue said she watched a crowd of yuppies break into the Stuart Brent Bookstore (where Saul Bellow shopped) and loot the coffee-table art books.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 17, 2008 5:30 PM

My favorite memory is from 2003. When the Oakland Raiders won the AFC championship, fans rioted in Oakland. A couple weeks later, when the Raiders lost the Super bowl, fans rioted in Oakland.

Posted by blah | January 17, 2008 5:45 PM

All I know is that I was relieved that WVU fans were relatively subdued after my Pitt Panthers beat 'em last December.

Posted by Shawn | January 17, 2008 9:29 PM

I hope everyone remembers this post and thread the next time some soccer-hating moron sports commentator decides to act as if hooliganism is limited to that sport.

Posted by Randy Paul | January 17, 2008 9:39 PM

As an acquaintance of mine in college used to say, if we nuked the college stadium during a game, we'd get rid of most of the morons in town.

Sports nut = moron.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 17, 2008 11:00 PM

I'd recommend "Among the thugs" by Bill Buford as an interesting look at the dynamics of crowd violence in association with alcohol and sport.

Posted by DNS | January 17, 2008 11:42 PM

DNS,

Great book, especially for an Arsenal fan such as myself.

Posted by Randy Paul | January 18, 2008 8:22 AM