Beer, Boorishness in Stands Spoil Games for Some Fans

The FedEx parking lot gates opened at 9 a.m. yesterday, and Charles Tomasch, Gina Manke and Kristin Bromberg, among about a dozen twenty-something friends, had staked out a place for their venerable Volkswagen, its trunk outfitted with a barbecue grill, and a old Chevy van, both spray-painted burgundy and gold.

"It's the greatest day of the week. We call it Redskins Van Day," said Manke, 21, a paralegal from Fredericksburg. The happy tailgaters were "shotgunning" beer -- puncturing cans to propel beer down their throats.

A couple of rows over was a huge contingent of Raiders fans. Stadium personnel around the league, particularly on the West Coast, go on high alert when the Raiders come calling. Proud of their reputation as the rowdiest fans in the NFL, a reputation challenged only by their counterparts in Philadelphia, they were loud, boisterous and decked out in their Goth-style black-and-silver masks, face paint and regalia.

For Raiders and Redskins fans, alcohol was flowing freely hours before kickoff. For the Marin Institute's Lieber, that's a real concern.

"Increased availability leads to increased consumption, which leads to increased problems," she said. "Some people never make it to the game. Others leave when sales are stopped inside the stadium so they can get to an off-site bar and not have to stop drinking."

Christian M. End, a psychology professor at Xavier University in Chicago and a founder of the Sports Fan Research Group, is not sure whether misbehavior is increasing or whether the glut of sporting events gives the appearance of a trend.

Alcohol consumption is a factor, End said, but not the only one. "Exposure to aggressive stimuli" -- loud noise, overcrowding, invasion of personal space -- increases the likelihood of rowdiness, End said, and the more aggressive the sport is, the more likely a person is to act aggressively.

"When we watch others who are being rewarded for their violence and aggression, we want to act the same way," he said.

End and other sports psychologists point to "deindividuation" -- fans in a crowd lose their inhibitions, their sense of personal responsibility. And alcohol consumption decreases inhibition even more.

Incidents Elsewhere

FedEx Field has so far avoided anything like the brawl that broke out in Auburn Hills, Mich., last season in an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons. The Redskins' most notorious incident occurred two years ago when, during a game with the Philadelphia Eagles, a Prince George's officer used pepper spray to break up a fight. The spray wafted over the Eagles' bench. No arrests were made because the boozing brawlers stopped throwing punches and blended into the crowd.

Professional football's so-called culture of intoxication has had much worse. In January, a New Jersey jury awarded $135 million to the family of Antonia Verni, who as a 2-year-old in 1999 was paralyzed from the neck down in a car crash caused by a drunk driver who had just left a New York Giants game. The jury found that the stadium concessionaire, Aramark Corp., irresponsibly sold beer to the driver.

According to testimony, Aramark vendors ignored state law and the company's policy by selling six beers to Daniel Lanzaro, 34, even though he was visibly drunk. The Verni family was driving home from picking pumpkins when a pickup driven by Lanzaro slammed into their car about 10 minutes from Giants Stadium.