As someone who lives in Pennsylvania and about only 50 or so miles from the city of Philadelphia, I could certainly attest to the screwball fans Philly sports teams have...

I bet booze was involved

Mob mentality... stupidity, look at me, I’m more stupid than you... seems to be becoming a tradition, of course the media “hypes” (advertises) it as such. The recent nighttime madness in Philadelphia was anticipated by city officials and contained fairly well, another “victory parade” takes place in two days, hopefully daylight brings more sanity to the streets.

"We" follow sports because we (most of us) no longer go to war or hunt, but we haven't outgrown our urges toward tribalistic aggression, feats of physical power, and contest. Cue the vicarious experience. Native Americans (especially in Central and South America) had this built into their culture with highly respected physical contests, sports and games. These were things that everybody did (men and women), and it served a vital need. That's not to say it obviated the need for warfare--most certainly did not--rather it was a healthy, culturally-institutionalized way to channel and vent those energies.

These days we just watch others do the feats of power, and hop on the tribal identity train by wearing their costumes and hollering. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not knocking it.

I'm just spitballing here, but i wonder if the property destruction is a boiling-over of primal urges that have not been vented through the vicarious experience and have reached a critical mass, catalysed by victory. People riot and break stuff when they're mad or when they're happy. Weird, but I don't think the specific emotion matters much.

The way to address that--spitballing again--would be to build a culture in which the common person regularly alleviates their primal urges by actively participating in some kind of structured contest, preferably--but not necessarily--physical in nature, in a framework that propagates respect for the process: competing, participating, winning, losing, being a member of a team, having opponents--all of it.

TL;DR: make people play sports, instead of just watching them.

Shallow people living vicariously through the accomplishments of others. Kinda like soccer moms. Brain dead and clueless. But, if you vandalized them, they'd cry out about the injustice...

I mentioned how I condemned the philly riots to a co worker. His response was "they'll just find something else to riot about." There was no other reason for them to riot. They did it because of a game, that they won. They do it when any sports team wins or loses. Maybe the problem is professional sports as a whole...

Fan Is a contraction of a fanatic, and that is what they are.