Blood Sports

Curious evidence about the link between sports and violence. Daniel I. Rees of the University of Colorado found that assaults and other mayhem increase after college football games, which is not super-surprising. The surprising part is that the amount of the increase in violence depends the outcome of the game. Assaults and vandalism go up the most, Rees found, after an upset -- and it didn't matter whether, for the home team, that upset was a surprise loss or a surprise win. Upsets of either type were followed by a spike in assaults. College sports have all sorts of bad effects on society, which the sports-loving elite refuses to count (for instance, college football brings revenue to the schools, which is tabulated to the last dime, but, as Rees points out, who offsets those figures by the costs of the crime the games impose on the surrounding areas?). But at least this time, it's an interestingly bad effect.