NFL and Domestic Violence

First off, if you scan the Web, you'll see several articles (such as this one) that accuse NFL fans of attacking women if their teams lose. But when you search the academic literature (people actually conducting studies), the picture is a bit more complex. There are some studies that claim to connect to connect the NFL to violence and their are other studies that say that the connection is very weak. From my reading of the articles, the generally agreement is that the numbes are tough to read, but there is some support that the outcome of NFL games may increase domestic violence in some places. However, the actualy impact of these games is fairly small. Afterall, we don't talk about it much but somewhere around 1400 women are killed each year due to domestic violence, so this is something that is going on with or without football.

Here's a small section from a report about an Indiana Unversity study. I thought that this was interesting. These guys noted that playoff games tended to coincde with high levels of domestic violence, but so did holidays. They also noted that the the Super Bowl is very close the Vanentines Day, which always has a high rate of Domestic Violence.

"...The researchers contacted police departments in every city with an NFL franchise between 1996 and 2001. They were able to obtain data from 14 cities. The study is based on 24,102 days of domestic violence data from these cities, including days when 1,108 games were played. Games that were expected to be close were thought to lead to greater fan anxiety and arousal of emotions leading to domestic violence. Gantz, Bradley and Wang found no such effect on game day. However, they noticed a pattern of domestic violence on the third day after the game. This finding is similar to a 1983 study, which discovered an increase in homicides on the third day after a heavyweight prize fight."

"While they can only speculate, the researchers observed that unlike baseball, basketball and hockey fans, football fans must live with the results of a bad game for a week. "Combined with other mid-week frustration, maximal distance from the weekend, simmering resentments and for some, lost bets, this frustration may need several days after the game to finally boil over," they wrote..."

"Indiana University Bloomington Researchers Examine Relationship Between Football, Domestic Violence." Ascribe Higher Education News Service, May 25, 2003 pNA

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