Columnist Dean Juipe: Volume’s up and it riles older fans

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001 | 10:38 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

We know for a fact there wasn't any research conducted on the subject.

No multiple and conclusive surveys.

No pollsters hired to ask the pertinent and basic questions.

Yet somehow over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, the people who put on sporting events in this country decided to bombard the spectators in the live crowds with loud and largely abhorrent music. For whatever reason, noise is in.

It was a decision made without benefit of input from Joe Fan.

Needless to say, some people -- mostly younger ones, it can be presumed -- like the added stimuli of blasting music and public-address announcers who shout information (and commands) to the crowd. They like their decibels high.

But it didn't used to be that way and the world was a more serene, if not better, place when spectators went to sporting events to appreciate the sport being contested.

Maybe you have to be old or over the hill to remember such things, but there was a time when music was but a subtle attraction at a sporting event.

At baseball games a gentlemanly organist wistfully played soothing melodies before the game or maybe between innings.

At hockey games a similar organist employed the occasional staccato beat to pump up the crowd when the home team needed a goal, but he was otherwise silent while the puck was in play and pastoral during intermissions.

And at football, basketball and boxing events, music was limited to the national anthem and maybe a halftime band representing a local high school.

Nowadays, you can't escape being broadsided by the bombast.

Two weeks ago at a boxing card at the Hard Rock, there was more rap and hip-hop and down time than actual fighting. Add in the worthless dancing girls that gyrated on the ring apron on cue and the lengthy breaks between fights, and anyone over the age of 25 in the crowd had sworn off ever coming back again (unless, like me, they may some day have to for business reasons).

Exceptionally loud music (and the inane sideshow) appears to have become a staple with pro sports and it may infiltrate the collegiate ranks.

In retrospect, it seems as if it was the NBA that started this detestable ball rolling. Without asking if anyone thought if it was a good idea, it began permitting, if not encouraging, sound overlays while the ball was in play. And during time outs and other breaks, it twisted the volume knob to the far right and hammered the crowd with "music" most in the audience wouldn't be caught dead listening to at home.

That's another thing: Aside from this new XFL venture that caters to the prepubescent and to adults burdened with a wrestling fan's mentality, those who buy tickets to the typical pro game are past the age of 30 and don't want to be bothered by dancing girls or pestered by debilitating music.

The horse having already left the barn on this one, the best those of us who favor a return to the old days can hope for is that the extraneous noise at sporting events is cyclical and that the Age of Reason may yet mount a comeback.

If so, it can't get here too soon.

If not, sports fans will come to be identified by their hearing aids.