NFL tied to domestic violence

A perplexing question to answer is does football promote violence in teenagers and adults who regularly watch NFL games? A recent study by IU researchers says when it comes to cases of domestic violence, football does not encourage as much of it as once thought.\n"IUB researchers found that expectation about a football game, rather than its outcome, was an even greater contributing factor in increased reports of domestic violence in 14 NFL cities highlighted in the study," according to a press release by IU Media Relations. However, not all football games bring forth excitement of fans' emotions leading to domestic violence.\nResearch conducted at IU presented May 25 at an international conference found the relationship between televised professional football and domestic violence was less common than previous reports suggested. The presentation was delivered at the International Communication Association conference in San Diego. The study, "Televised NFL Games and Domestic Violence: A 14 City Study," was prepared by Walter Gantz, chairman and professor of telecommunications and two doctoral students, Sam Bradley and Zheng Wang. \n"None of us are domestic violence experts," Gantz said, referring to himself and his co-authors. "However, we know that domestic violence is linked with geography, the seasons of the year, more domestic violence takes place in the summer than the winter, it is linked with weekends, and it is linked with communication skills, alcohol consumption, and drug use. We didn't think that pro football would have a huge effect on domestic violence because there are so many other factors that are involved with domestic violence."\nThe researchers contacted police departments in every city with an NFL franchise between 1996 and 2001. \nWang described his interest in this project.\n"This study, to me, has special meaning of methodology training and practicing," Wang said. "It uses large scale data over time from real life, and uses complicated statistics. These are very interesting to me." \nThe researchers found the number of domestic violence cases was inversely related to the point-spread. The authors said the more the team was expected to lose, the greater the number of domestic violence dispatches on game day. Bradley said as a team was expected to win, domestic hostility decreased.\nGantz expanded on this finding and the types of NFL games that lead to domestic disturbances. He said if a person knows their team is going to lose there's a sort of grumpiness. He added if it's an important game, late in the year, and it's close, those games were more linked with domestic violence. \nMoreover, the researchers tested theories about whether the Super Bowl -- the most widely viewed single television event of the year and an unofficial holiday for many -- could predict domestic aggression. But the study found the number of cases reported on Super Bowl Sunday was fairly small compared to those on a holiday such as Christmas.\n"We went into this not expecting a huge spike," Gantz said. "The Super Bowl doesn't lead to as much domestic violence as other holidays and I'll tell you why. First, it draws the largest audience in terms of attendance, so people who normally watch it on TV are actually at the game. Second, some people watch the Super Bowl only for the ads and not for the game. Also, most fans' teams are not involved in the Super Bowl, so they care less and are less passionate about who wins."\nWhile there wasn't a huge fluctuation with domestic conflicts on Super Bowl Sunday, there were still some additional cases of domestic violence. \nA study of this magnitude took a great deal of time and manpower. A gracious Gantz gave the credit to his colleagues. Gantz thanked Bradley and Wang for doing most of the work and said they knew the right people to contact. \nBradley expressed the challenges the researchers faced.\n"It's really easy to uniform crime," Bradley said. "Police departments are very willing to give monthly crime totals. But when it comes to individual days, that's very difficult. You have to explain to them. Monthly totals are not good."\nThe city of Indianapolis responded that it did not keep such accounts. \nCities providing information on domestic violence were Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Green Bay, Kansas City, Miami, Oakland, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, and Tampa Bay.\n"This study is preliminary because we've only studied 14 out of the 30 NFL cities," Gantz said. "But for some cities it's very difficult to gather the data needed because they clump the data together in months or years, and we're targeting specific days. The effects might accrue on certain days, but we don't really know for sure. I would like to do research for at least 20 NFL cities."\nFinally, Gantz warned that sports fans need to be more cognizant of their actions and realize that sports are simply a game. \n"Sports can be exciting and be physiologically arousing," Gantz said, "which fans need to realize when they are wrapped up in the action and after the game is over"