Other sports should follow golf's lead and ban cell phones from events

Is there anything more anti-climactic than when you’re watching a football game on TV and there’s a huge, 80-yard run to win the game, the crowd goes wild, and the camera cuts to a cluster of fans and 90% of them are, you guessed it, TEXTING!!

It drives me nuts that so many fans twiddle on their phones all game. And in sports like baseball or hockey, it’s damned dangerous. Fans should have their eye on the ball/puck at all times because it could be flying at their skull any second.

At baseball stadiums, I’m convinced that at any given point, the percentage of fans actually watching the game and are not updating their Twitter status ("I’m at the baseball game! It’s soooo exciting!!") is around 4-6%.

But the worst offenders are college basketball fans. They should have no excuse to be on their phones during a furious second half rally. There’s a TV timeout every ten seconds, so wait until then to see if Kim is going to be at Alpha Chi for the kegger afterwards, and then get back into the game. Your team needs you to scream vicious obscenities at the opposing team while they D up. It’s your duty as an enrolled student.

Thank goodness you can’t bring cell phones to golf events. Not only does it let you disconnect for a few hours, but it makes for better TV, because the fans are actually emotionally engaged in the action. You go to golf events to watch golf, not to text your friends and tweet that you’re at the golf tournament.

Can you imagine if during Tiger Woods’ 18th hole putt at Torrey Pines on Sunday of the U.S. Open last year, all the fans were trying to capture, blurry, dimly-lit IPhone camera photos?

Maybe what sports teams should do is ban cell phone use in the lower bowl. So if you’re one of those offenders who just go to the games and check stock quotes and emails all afternoon because you’re a Crackberry addict, you can go to the cheap seats, where the TV cameras won’t find you and ruin the drama for viewers at home. Or better yet just stay home and watch TV with your notebook on your lap for four hours.

You can follow Brandon Tucker’s golf blog and more on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brandontucker or follow WorldGolf.com at Twitter.com/worldgolf . Have a golf travel question for Brandon? Email him by clicking here