How is it that winning a championship in professional sports can make many “fans” so proud of their city that they want to burn it down?
After last night’s (as I write this) Game 5 victory of the sports team, the New York Knicks, “fans” chanting “Knicks in five!” incinerated a school bus.
🚨 BREAKING: Rioters have begun setting the school buses ON FIRE in Times Square during the Knicks riots
Police do not have NEARLY ENOUGH SUPPORT
Mamdani and Hochul have ABSOLUTELY FAILED NYPD and law abiding New Yorkers pic.twitter.com/yMtwfvhvFa
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 14, 2026
Actually five school buses. (Five police cars were assaulted, too. Good thing the series didn’t go seven games.) “Your” team wins, you destroy stuff? What does one have to do with the other?
Seems odd to me. But that is just the viewpoint of one rational, American, straight white Christian male, so take it with a grain of salt. That said, I am an avid sports fan, and yet I’ve never so much as deflated a cop car’s tire after a big victory. (Full disclosure: I am a Minnesota sports fan, so I haven’t had many opportunities to do so.)
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If folks like these had been around when the United States defeated both Germany and Japan in World War II, they might have summarily started looting and burning the victorious nation and soon-to-be world’s only superpower. Twice. I find this to be ironic. And, not to put too fine a point on it, insane.
What if, say, Scotty Scheffler won the Masters by sinking a 30-foot putt for a birdie on the 18th hole… and his fans proceeded to destroy Augusta National Golf Club?
Is it traditional for the family of a student’s spelling bee contest winner to set fire to the venue at which it was held? No? Then why the difference? That is a rhetorical question, one to which I believe most of us know the answer.
Culture matters. Standards matter. Expectations (and assumed consequences) matter. As do simple human decency and dignity. But, what the hell, “Knicks in five! Knicks in five!”
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Now let’s torch Manhattan.
Image: Screenshot from shareable Nick Sortor video, posted on X