It is fair to say that sports fans can be very passionate about their team and their support. For many, supporting their team goes well beyond just standing on the side-lines and cheering, it becomes a way of life that they never let go of. Getting caught up in competition madness is relatively easy. Over the years this has led to some really interesting events being recorded that have been carried out by some rather over excited fans. So here are the 5 craziest things sports fans have done so far, no doubt there will be more to add to this list as time goes on.
1. Committed to the Team
We all know that following your team takes a little bit of dedication, so it’s no surprise that fans will travel between games to see their team play. But in March 2017 some fans of the East Russian team Luch Vladivostok FC took to travelling to support their players to quite the extreme. They headed all the way across the country, which is an impressive 13,000 miles and takes a minimum of 14 hours journey time just to get there to watch the team play. Generally, most fans had a few 100 miles maximum with the occasional international jaunt but to travel for over 24 hours there and back takes some doing and their fans must be pretty dedicated.
2. Going All In
We really can’t say we support this one, but it did happen. What do you do when your team is losing? In 2012 the Detroit Lions were doing incredibly badly during a game against the New Orleans Saints, so one somewhat crazy fan named Sean Payton, who was 34, decided to make a hoax bomb call to halt the progress of the game. He called the stadium pretending to be a terrorist who would bomb the 73,000-capacity building if the game wasn’t stopped immediately. This didn’t quite get the immediate reaction he hoped for, so he also made a threatening call to the Saints team’s coach offering severe consequences if he didn’t stop his team from winning – not exactly same behaviour! It didn’t really go so well and ended with 60 days of house arrest and three years’ probation for the intrepid fan.
3. The Lucky Octopus
Again, we’re not really sure that this is actually the best idea, but it started way back in 1952 and involves the Detroit Red Wings. This ice hockey team was experiencing a typical game when two brothers Jerry and Pete Cusimano took it upon themselves to launch a dead octopus onto the ice. Bizarre right? However, that year the team won the championship and people attributed this success to the eight-legged monster. It has become something of a tradition that octopus is thrown into the ring whenever the Detroit Red Wings are playing. It does tend to get a little messy as one year there were 36 octopus thrown onto the arena floor, so it’s possibly better that they stick with their unofficial mascot who is a purple octopus that they have named Al.
4. Dangerous Not Crazy
Local teams always have some of the fiercest rivalry going. So, AC Milan and Inter Milan fans really do not see eye to eye. Since AC Milan was born in 1899, the two teams hate each other so stop the difference between the two because AC Milan had a rule that you were not allowed to play on the team if you were foreign or not from the local area. But not everyone agreed with us, so Inter Milan was formed. This bitter rivalry has continued even up to the present day, and in a match in 2015 which was a Champions League game it got rather heated. AC Milan looked set to win until a goal was disallowed by the referee because the Inter Milan defender fouled the goalie. Inter Milan was not happy because they saw this as their chance to take back the game and fans retaliated by launching flares into the field of play and even hitting the poor AC Milan goalkeeper. It backfired because the match was immediately ended, and AC Milan were, in fact, the winners.
5. Leave the Trees Please
Sometimes the thought path of the fans doesn’t make sense to anybody else. The Auburn Tigers fans traditionally cover local trees with toilet paper which in itself is relatively harmless. But things got a little bit nasty in 2010 when one fan decided that he would poison the trees. He did so after the Auburn Tigers took the iron bowl trophy away from Alabama. This was not the only time the poor trees copped the blame for their local sports team because in 2016 having recovered from their poisoning ordeal an angry LSU fan who lived in Auburn decided to torch the trees when Auburn won over LSU.
