In a study with some rather sickening results, it turns out that when NFL teams lose games that they are favored to win, especially games against rivals, domestic violence cases spike. The study appeared in the Quarterly Journal Of Economics, and studied the states of Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Michigan, Colorado, and Missouri. The results? Ugh.
↵↵↵• Upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by four or more points) lead to a 10 percent increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends.
↵• The rise in police reports after upset losses to a traditional rival (20 percent) was about twice that after upset losses to a non-rival team (8 percent)
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↵"Our results suggest that the overall rise in violence between the intimate partners we studied is driven entirely by losses in games that matter most to fans," said David Card, a University of California, Berkeley economist.
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Detectives believe alcohol was involved.
↵It's never fun to see that wall between seriousness and sports broken. I know it's becoming more common post-9/11, but I prefer to leave the two apart. If it is to be broken however, it should be broken for cases like this. Don't smack your woman around because your favorite team loses a football game. It's a cowardly act.
↵I'm so serious about this that I won't even add a token joke about the Texans being a socially conscious organization to the proceedings. If you can't control yourself under the influence, don't drink.
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