Columnist Dean Juipe: Peaceful weekend is crucial

Dean Juipe

Friday, Sept. 21, 2001 | 10:27 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.

With its sports stadiums open again this weekend, perhaps America can begin to eradicate at least some of its apprehension and skittishness toward en masse assemblies.

Following the postponement or cancellation of 111 college football games, 91 Major League Baseball games, 15 National Football League games and 10 Major League Soccer matches as the result of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the country is slowly returning to form. Baseball got back on track this week and the other sports are following suit on an incremental basis.

Predictably, security has been intensified tenfold at the majority of venues. Guards and/or metal detectors await each and every person who enters a stadium, just as similar precautions are being used at any number of facilities that house multiple businesses and staffs.

From all reports, the public welcomes the greater accountability and seems very tolerant of any and all resulting delays.

The reason: Beyond the inherent threat of additional acts of terrorism that these stadium searches may repel, the American sports fan has a broader concern. He doesn't want to see the type of hooliganism that arises at various sporting events around the world be duplicated here, and it appears as if it's a good time for the country to put its foot down.

Sporting events elsewhere on the globe are frequently and almost routinely interrupted by unruliness in the crowd. Whether it's simple fisticuffs in the stands or the tossing of fruit and vegetables toward targeted athletes, outsiders can and do disrupt games with surprising regularity.

The checkpoint mentality that henceforth will be in effect at America's stadiums and arenas can stand as a subliminal warning that the fan need not bring anything extraneous beyond his allegiance to his team when purchasing a ticket to a given game.

The rowdyism that surrounds sporting events in Europe and Africa, in particular, hopefully will never spread to these shores. And with the changes that have been and will be implemented at U.S. stadiums in the upcoming days, the intrusion will, at the very least, be delayed.

Likewise, those charged with security at this winter's Olympic Games in Salt Lake City are feverishly reviewing and modifying the details of their responsibility. We'd like to believe that any would-be terrorist bent on making a statement during the Games in Utah will be deterred.

Still, we head into the resumption of play this weekend amid countless reports of athletes ill at ease with not only air travel but their environment and the trappings of competing on a stage that potentially attracts terroristic activity. It's easy to sympathize with their misgivings.

The best thing that could happen, of course, is that every game goes off as scheduled and nothing even remotely untoward interrupts the script. A subdued sense of normalcy would be just fine.

The next couple of days can be seen as an important time for sports in America. Regardless of their outcomes, the scheduled games need to fall into place.

If they do, we may yet regain a portion of the comfort level we enjoyed prior to Sept. 11.