ftballfan

Steeler fan here...condolences to the the family, the entire Ravens organization, and the Flock on the passing of coach Brooks. By every standard he was a great coach and an even better person. RIP.
Some things are more important than footbal. Cancer is one of them.

I was at the game. That picture of the stadium is very misleading. Just for the sake of accuracy (fwiw), that picture was taken at the very start of the overtime period while most of the people were not back in their seats yet. It's also a picture of the 'club' section where those fans have the option to watch from inside. Ever see the stands at M&T at the very beginning of the 3rd period? (I have, for 15 years) The stands are half empty, until everybody files back in. Same thing here. I can assure you that the stadium was packed, just to have Tucker send them all home.

This all happened a few rows in front of where I was sitting...in fact I'm briefly in the video. Here's what you didn't see in the video....

Here's exactly what happened. There were relatively few of us Baltimore fans in this particular section, but at first everyone was relatively friendly with good natured barbs going back and forth. A Pittsburgh fan even bought my wife and I a beer. During the course of the game, and as everyone drank more, as you would expect, the smack got worse and more personal. For some stupid reason, the Raven fan got more and more belligerent in the middle of all these Steeler fans.  His wife / girlfriend tried to calm him down, and of course it only infuriated the Steeler fans so they retaliated and a real war of words between him and a few others erupted.

Finally, and I don't know what was said, the Raven fan (briefly) grabbed the lady behind  him by the throat and pushed her away. At that point, security was called and everyone started shooting video because obviously this was going to get interesting. That's pretty much where this news video starts. To her credit, the woman who was grabbed, tried to hold her husband back from retaliating (though he was older and probably would have had a heart attack anyway), but other fans got him. My wife said security coming so quickly probably saved the guy's life! (Though the same can't be said for his jersey)

At any rate, it happens everywhere. We have season tickets and try to go to a few away games each year, and I've seen some severe stupidity of visiting fans. This incident aside, I've seen much worse from opposing fans visiting M&T