This is my surprised face.

Is there hooliganism at american football games? Or is that exclusive to voetbal?

the closest thing we have to football hooliganism in american football is the fanbase of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Hm. That's strange...
Why is that do you think?

I'd think that US adolescent males are just as fucked up on testosterone as voetbalfans in other parts of the world.

I live a few blocks from the Steeler's stadium and while people get ridiculously drunk in the parking lots before the games, there's seldom any violence. Even when Cleveland, the main rival plays, people are pretty cool about visiting fans.

There's probably more fan violence for college teams than pro teams in the US. Around here West Virginia is pretty notorious for rioting after football wins. This always seems to involve dragging couches out into the street and setting them on fire.

octothorpe's got a very good point. College teams inspire much more violence than pro teams.

I think our relative absence of hardcore sport hooligans has a lot to do with the militancy of American police and prosecutors. Bill Buford's Among The Thugs has a story about a British football thug who, out of nowhere, just decided to inflict a brutal injury -- I'm not going to share the details here -- on a police officer. He got -- I think -- a five year sentence. I remember thinking, as I read this, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT. IN THE USA, THAT DUDE WOULD NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. THEY'D KILL HIM ON THE WAY TO THE GODDAMN STATION. TWENTY YEARS, MINIMUM."

Another factor is that the tickets tend to be goofy expensive. American football teams want affluent people up there in the stands, not groups of poor-to-working class young men who make up most of the potential troublemaker element.

Football tends to be a family thing here too. You'll see three generations of a family heading to the game together and season tickets are willed down to people's heirs. Currently there's a fifty year waiting list for Steelers' season tickets so the only way that you're going to get one is if your grandfather bought one in 1965.