Violence in Sports Throughout History

There are an incredible amount of cultural similarities between ancient history and today. In some ways, we have really progressed as a society and in other ways, we still hold some of those ancient values. One of the ways that we have maintained the same ideals is through sports, more specifically violence in sports. It is very apparent that violence has been a dominant aspect in sports and games all throughout history. In this paper, I will be talking about how violence in sports has not changed throughout history and how violence in sports is relevant today. In section one, the 1976 game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be described and discussed. In section two, will talk about the Hunt and human nature influencing men to be aggressive. Section three will talk about the Homer Epics and how they relate to the violent nature of men. Section four will talk about the game of Soule played during the Modern Renaissance and will touch on the Roman Gladiator games. Section five will talk about the significance to all things talked about in the 21st Century. The nature for men to have an aggressive and dominant tendency has been clearly shown throughout history and continues to be shown on fields, rinks, and many more sporting spaces.  

Hockey has maintained a reputation of having a violent nature; many injuries can come from playing such a high contact sport. Not only are players exposed to typical injuries such as broken bones or sprained ankles, but, occasionally players are exposed to other potential dangers such as fistfights. This is how the 19th-century event chosen, happened. In the hockey game, between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, Three players from Philadelphia were charged with assaulting Toronto Maple Leaf fans. There have been many incidents in hockey stirring publicity but this incident was one of the biggest being awarded the title “Week of Disgrace”. During this particular game, Philadelphia lost 5-4 after winning the first two games in a series. It was an incredibly rough and physical match, the duration of the game was almost one and a half its average length taking 3 and half hours to complete. The amount of aggression and dominance shown on the ice was just the beginning of what was to come. According to the NHL Rules, rule 47 -fighting- states that any player who is thought to have started the fight will receive a minor penalty, a major penalty, and a 10 minutes misconduct. For each penalty to take place there is a short time that is passed allowing referees to determine the penalty and for the player to get inside the penalty box. All of those minutes would add up creating the three-and-a-half-hour game. This particular game came out to have 163 penalty minutes in total, whereas an average hockey game sits at approximately 15-20 penalty minutes. The New York Times goes on to talk about one of the incidents that happened that game was a police officer being assaulted by a hockey stick behind the penalty box. Some of the charges laid that night were, assault causing bodily harm, common assault, and a dangerous weapon charge. 

Historically, men have needed to act in violent ways in order to defend their land and protect and provide for their families. “It is not uncommon to hear male teenagers openly admire their elders and ancestors for their perceived autonomy, strength, and ability to kill”. Hunting, throughout generations, is a sign of superiority, masculinity, strength, and much more. This idea of violence is shown through many different aspects in the culture of Durani Bai, not just in more western civilizations. Violence is shown all over the world throughout history. High goes on to talk about how men and women would recount stories of being abused by their fathers and grandfathers by receiving whippings, the older men had the idea that by whipping their children and educating them in such a manner would show them how to be strong. It’s further described in the article that children receiving physical abuse from elders are a way of passing knowledge to them, showing them how it is to be an adult. This shows how physical aggression has been used throughout history to show dominance, teach lessons, provide life to families through hunting, chasing, and much more. Aggression has been ingrained in humans for so long and is now carried out in other fashions more acceptable in today’s society.  

Violence is shown in history through more than just hunting and teaching children knowledge of adulthood; it has been shown through many sporting events in history. All throughout history, there are examples of how sport has changed and evolved and also how it has remained the same. One of the biggest ways sport remains true to its roots is through the violence and aggression shown in sporting games. Violence in history dates all the back to the Homer Epics, where a “majority of the more severe injuries that took place during the Homer Epics were caused by the participation in war-like activities”. Men, at the time, needed to be a part of battles taking place and use the weapons available to them which resulted in a lot of injuries. As history progressed the idea of violence in life did not disappear. The Romans adopted the brutality in sports from the Etruscans. The Etruscans made violence in sport normal, they had a thirst for blood and everything for them was a “fight to the death”. It’s made apparent in Nigel Crowther’s article “Sports Violence in the Roman and Byzantine Empires”, that violence was everywhere. A riot in Pompei occurred that was not part of regular gladiator spectacles, but it broke out because groups of men fought in order to prove their physical education/ability and military worthiness. Men taunting one another caused this riot, this is often seen in sporting events today between both the fans and athletes in sports. Crowther proceeds to talk about how some of the spectators of the Pompeii Riot prepared with weapons such as knives, in case fights were to breakout. The idea of taunting and using words to anger people is seen in the NHL game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Toronto Maple Leafs. In all of these cultures, men are the ones who are playing sports and fighting in the wars.

H. A. Harris writes in the book Sport of Greece and Rome, that in the second century AD, boys would play the game of throwing balls at each other with the intent of hitting the other person with the ball, the boy who gets hit is the loser of the game. This very simplistic game demonstrates the idea that using force to hit one another makes someone a winner. Men have shown that through the physical force of hitting, that someone will come out as a winner, hockey demonstrates this very clearly. Fistfights break out on the ice very often because one of the players is trying to hit in order to win, to gain dominance.  

During the middle ages, the peasants played the game of Soule at the time, as described in the article The Game of Soule by Bentley’s Miscellany in the Periodical Archives. It’s described that it wasn’t just any ordinary sport, but a “terrible festival”. The days soule was played were deemed to be the days to right wrongs and end grudges. The men who played were seeking to get revenge, “Et quel est celui qui n’as pas quelqu’un à tuer”. This has the meaning of, “and what is someone who does not have someone to kill”. Soule was played in order to release built-up male aggression. The article proceeds to talk about how after the ball has been thrown, chaos ensues. There are people running to get the ball and others getting up from the ground covered in blood after not being able to prove strong against other competitors. Trampling of men playing is not uncommon in the game of Soule. In the end, this game is not for the weak, it is a bloody and gruesome game. 

Gladiator games are another gruesome activity that shows violence in sports. One of the most bloody activities played in ancient Rome, AD 27, resulting in about “20,000 casualties and 50,000 maimed or crushed to death”. It is described in this article that the roman spectacles were created as an “outlet for aggression”.  Men build up anger and frustration over time and the gladiator games are a way to release pent-up emotions. The violent sport thrived because spectators were thrilled when an athlete of the game won the game even after “being strangled by his opponent”. Emperors at the time would refuse to agree to requests from the spectators about the games, which is what Crowther believed to be the reason the games became increasingly aggressive during that period in Roman history. 

There is a lot of significance to the 2019 sports culture relating to violence in sports. The amount of knowledge out now about how to rehabilitate injuries, and the stages that an injury goes through before being healed. Cressman wrote in The Evaluation of the use of Healing Imagery in Athletic Injury Rehabilitation the three stages that injuries go through. The first stage is the inflammatory stage, this stage occurs 0-6 days after the injury has occurred, how long it might last and that is will begin to disappear when the damaged cells are removed by white blood cells. The second stage is described as the proliferative stage. Occurs approximately 3 days after the injury and can last up to a couple of weeks, it ends when fibers of the muscle or tendon, etc. straighten out back to normal position. The final stage is called the remodeling phase, in this phase collagen fibers that were repaired in the second stage work to become stronger and healthier, this may take a year or more in order to be fully complete. While talking about the specific methods of rehabilitation, the idea that there is lots of new scientific evidence on how to properly rehabilitate athletes continues to evolve. As the science behind sports injury grows, the awareness grows as well. As Crowther had said, injuries in the Roman time period often resulted in death due to the violent nature of the sport and the weapons used during the sporting events. M. Cusimano et al. wrote after an experiment relating to young boys and adolescent boys in hockey, that “interventions must appeal to young players’ sense of competitiveness, while simultaneously developing their respect and awareness of injury”. Continuing, in that article is talks about how there needs to have more knowledge surrounding the athlete's “notion of masculinity” which leads to the violence in the game. In order to decrease the aggression in sports, hockey but all sports, players, and spectators need to understand that there are consequences to those violent actions. Cusimano et al., go on to write about how there needs to be “non-violent role models” that these young players can look up to. Seeing idols fight only makes young players believe that is how the game is played. I believe that if there is more knowledge and understanding in the sporting communities of how the violence and aggression of players impact lives that the amount of violence in sports will decrease. 

In conclusion, we still see a lot of similarities between ancient sports and sports today. Violence is still a big part of sports culture from athletes and fans, it has been ingrained in the minds of men that to be aggressive is to be superior. This concept is still shown through violence in hockey and other sports, men will try to dominate one another through their physicality. We have, however, progressed as a society in order to change our violent nature since there is more evidence and knowledge about the consequences of fighting in sports and what repercussions can come from it later in life. Sporting organizations are taking more steps in order to encourage people to not use violence as a form of showing talent and skill. As the year's progress, we should see a steady decline in violence in sports compared to where we once started in ancient history. 

References 

1. “Bentley's Miscellany.” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 25, no. 4, 1849, pp. 363–378., doi:10.1176/ajp.5.4.363.
2. Cressman, J. (2010). Evaluation of the use of healing imagery in athletic injury rehabilitation (Order No. MR68724). Available from Dissertations & Theses @ Wilfrid Laurier University; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (819673577). Retrieved from https://libproxy.wlu.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.wlu.ca/docview/819673577?accountid=15090
3. Crowther, N. B. (1996). Sports violence in the roman and byzantine empires: A modern legacy? The International Journal of the History of Sport, 13(3), 445-458. doi:10.1080/09523369608713960
4. Cusimano MD, Ilie G, Mullen SJ, Pauley CR, Stulberg JR, Topolovec-Vranic J, et al. (2016) Aggression, Violence and Injury in Minor League Ice Hockey: Avenues for Prevention of Injury. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0156683. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0156683 
5. Harris, H. A. (1973). Sport in Greece and Rome. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 
6. High, Casey. “Warriors, Hunters, and Bruce Lee: Gendered Agency and the Transformation of Amazonian Masculinity.” American Ethnologist, vol. 37, no. 4, 2010, pp. 753–770., doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01283.x.
7. “3 Flyers Accused of Assault in Toronto.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Apr. 1976,www.nytimes.com/1976/04/17/archives/3-flyers-accused-of-assault-in-toronto-3-flyers-accused-of-assault.html. 
8. NHL PA. “NHL / IIHF Rules Comparison.” NHL.com, www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=60036.
9. Nomikos, N. (2018). Injuries in the Greek epics of Homer. Chinese Journal of Traumatology, volume 21 (2), 109-112. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjtee.2017.09.005 
10. Reed, J. D., Kamb, S., Leggett, W., Jares, J., Deford, F., Reid, R., … Looney, D. S. (1976, April 26). Week of Disgrace on the Ice. Retrieved from https://www.si.com/vault/1976/04/26/618194/week-of-disgrace-on-the-ice.