Quote:
Originally Posted by Madison
I wonder how often sports teams are penalized for the behavior of fans wearing team jerseys. Probably not often.
When we're at competition -- especially those closest to home -- about half of the people walking around the venue in 488 shirts are folks I've never seen before.
What do we do? We could deny our supporters the chance to wear our uniform, but that doesn't really seem to jive with the notion of celebrating what we're all doing there. We could make them all go sit through some ridiculous "gracious professionalism" lecture, but since these are people I've never seen before, I'd rather be happy that they've showed up at all.
The short version, I guess, is that I think penalizing an entire group of people for the actions of a small number of people -- especially without any notion of the role those people play on the team -- is completely ridiculous.
|
Group punishment
is ridiculous under most circumstances, but I think that that's not the root of the problem.
In a sports context, there's usually a separation between the fans (even those wearing jerseys) and the players. If a fan ran onto the field wearing team colours, there wouldn't usually be any question about who was responsible.
In a FIRST context, teams often just mass-produce a shirt and hand it out to anyone with a pulse and a tenuous connection to the team. Since a FIRST team member could be anybody, it's hard for a judge to guess who's just a related spectator, and who's actually on the team (and partially responsible for the team's conduct).
One solution might be to print two sets of shirts—one for the team, and one for the team's supporters (labelled as such). Of course, the judges would still have to know how to make the distinction, and it's not so easy to raise that point with the judges (to make sure they know what to look for) without throwing up red flags.
Either way, the team needs to be cautious about how they're being perceived.