FRI 30 JAN 2004
Experts: Super Bowl doesn’t increase violence
By Tara KarrArgonaut Staff
The Super Bowl is associated with more than football; wild parties, commercials, nachos and beer are intertwined with America’s biggest sporting event.
But domestic violence?
Rumors that Super Bowl Sunday has the highest domestic violence rate for any day of the year have been circulating since 1993, when NBC ran a public service announcement before the game about domestic violence.
However, experts are saying it is all a myth.
Today, a majority of domestic violence experts agree there is no correlation between the Super Bowl and domestic violence. Amanda Rains, assistant director of Alternatives to Violence on the Palouse, said there are no particular times when domestic violence levels are significantly higher than normal.
Rains said there are many myths, such as hot weather or holiday stress causing increased levels of violence. “We serve when people are victimized,” she said. “You can’t say there tends to be a higher time than others.” Despite the lack of evidence, Rains said, many people still mistake the Super Bowl myth for fact.
Although the myth’s origins stem from the 1993 PSA, it did not say domestic violence increases on Super Bowl Sunday; instead, it encouraged general awareness. The PSA featured a well-dressed man in a jail cell who said he did not know you could go to prison for hitting your wife. A voice-over announced, “Domestic violence is a crime.”
The controversy sparked by the PSA, however, perpetuated both the myth and the drive to debunk it. Both before and after it aired, media reports circulated that women’s shelters and hospitals reported increased violence on Super Bowl Sunday.
On Jan. 29, 1993, the Boston Globe ran Lynda Gorov’s article, “Activists: Abused women at risk on Super Bowl Sunday.”
The article began, “Super Bowl Sunday is the best day of the year for many football fans and the worst day for abused women.” It stated that shelters and hotlines were flooded with calls after the Super Bowl, and cited “one study of women’s shelters out West” as showing a 40 percent increase in calls.
According to the article, similar statistics were used to urge NBC to donate the airtime for the PSA.
On Jan. 31, 1993, the Washington Post ran Ken Ringle’s article, “Debunking the ‘Day of Dread’ for women: Data lacking for claim of domestic violence surge after Super Bowl.”
According to Ringle, a large number of claims such as those in the Globe were untrue. “Despite their dramatic claims, none of the activists appears to have any evidence that a link actually exists between football and wife-beating,” Ringle said. He quoted Gorov, who admitted she cited the 40 percent increase without seeing the study behind it.
Ringle also interviewed an NBC spokesperson, who said NBC ran the PSA to aid the domestic violence awareness cause, not because of statistics indicating the game would incite violence.
In 2002 the Family Violence Prevention Fund Web site, www.endabuse.org, published further information on the Super Bowl and domestic violence. According to the FVPF article, the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center did a limited study based on Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dispatches from 1993-1995. The study concluded that football Sundays, including Super Bowl Sunday, “were not significantly associated with increased domestic violence dispatch calls.”
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