As a life long Seahawks fan who went to his first home game....at the first home game in 1977, Things HAVE really changed. I was 11 years old during my first season with the Seahawks. My parents felt it was totally ok to buy our family season tickets and take me to every game, where their largest worry was strategic parking before the game. They had no worry that I would be exposed to rude fan behavior, or that some drunken fan would throw up on us. In fact, I can remember no specific incidents of bad fan behavior from Home fans or visiting fans. In fact, we had a KC Chiefs fan sit in front of us one game early on.....and 10 years later that same fan sat in the same seat and my dad greeted him like a lost friend and they bantered back and fourth the whole game....all in good fun. We were ALL fans of football. We held those seats until they brought the place down.
Since those days, our entire culture has changed..... This is not just a football fan issue. This is a larger issue. It has become ok to yell and ridicule people. It has become ok to be disrespectful to women. It has become totally ok to publicly shame another person. I see this behavior most often with the under 25 crowd. Trashing another person on facebook, or twitter or a message board is the new normal........My 18 year old daughter says its fun. Is anyone surprised this behavior then comes out in public, with total strangers....where it is easy to be anonymous hiding behind a fan jersey in a stadium full of 65,000 other people? Man, I don't. It's shameful really.
You can call me old, or stupid, or nostalgic or whatever the hell you want....but I think everyone should be able to experience being a fan. The game day experience is what made me into a lifelong Seahawks fan. I don't want parents to not want to take their kids to a game because they are worried. Now....with that said, I would not take an 11 year old to an away game. I expect a certain amount of ribbing, and a run in or two with a guy who has had too much. I can deal with this just fine....and have most recently at Mile High Stadium a couple of years ago.
It just comes down to treating people the way you would want to be treated. Unfortunately, that's a pretty low level for some.