Come on, it's only a game! Get a grip! How could this happen?

Dr. Glenn Brassington knows how this could happen. A psychologist, professor of psychology at Sonoma State, lecturer in health and performance psychology and a former adjunct professor at Stanford, Brassington has worked with Olympic, college and professional athletes, including players from the NFL, NBA and MLB. A member of SSU's Athletic Advisory Board, Brassington has an NCAA championship ring from working with the Sea Wolves' 2002 soccer team.

With 25 years of experience in the field, Brassington knows well how sports can become addicting and unhealthy.

“I would like to say I'm surprised at what happened last Sunday (death threats),” said Brassington, 47, “but I am actually surprised it doesn't happen a little bit more.”

Brassington then went about connecting the dots — the factors that contribute to the final troubling act of threatening someone's life over a fumbled football. By the time Brassington finished, it was clear there was more at work here than someone just frustrated in the moment.

For starters there's this sentence: It's only a game.

No, it's not, said Brassington.

“A game is like going out in the backyard and tossing the football around with your kid,” he said. “But last Sunday you drive in the rain to the game. It takes you a couple hours to get there. You pay for parking. You pay for food inside the stadium. You sit in the stands in the rain for the entire game. It is cold, windy. You pay a lot of money for that ($2,000-$3,000 seats were common). That's not just a game. That's a big commitment.”

Meaning, would someone drive three hours to stand in the wind, cold and rain to throw a football with his son for several hours?

“There's something going on that we call living vicariously,” Brassington said. “You dress up in team colors. You paint your body. You wear that 49er jersey. You feel part of the team. You work yourself up because this is your team. You feel like you are out there, like you are playing. I have worked with (NFL) guys who can't get out of bed on Monday morning. By the end of the season, it's a month before they feel their body again. But the fan? He thinks he is doing it, too, but he goes back to work the next day.”

Meaning, how would someone get that worked up at a real game, like a real game, say, of horseshoes?

“The NFL doesn't display football as just a game,” Brassington said. “It wouldn't be good for marketing. It's based on conflict. Notice the television ads (robotic, muscular players flexing). Teams announce they are going to war on Sunday (the Raiders do this all the time.)

Players talk about how they need to defend themselves in their house (Deion Sanders was legendary about this). There's the terminology (throwing the bomb, for example). There's the violence of course.”

Meaning, how many people go to war playing a game of badminton?

“In other sports like basketball and baseball,” Brassington said, “games are happening all the time, sometimes daily. Wins and losses are occurring frequently. There's a rhythm involved there, one emotion is quickly replaced by the other the next day. But in football the games are spaced out just far enough apart that create a build-up without losing interest.”

Meaning, how does one explode in rage after the Golden State Warriors have lost their fifth consecutive game in an eight-day span?

“Twenty, thirty years ago, sports wasn't as accessible as it is now,” Brassington said. “You didn't have hand-held devices to give you second-by-second scores. You might go to work and have to wait until lunchtime, or after dinner, to find out how your team did.”

Meaning, how can one keep the inferno hot if there's a five-hour moment-of-pause?

“Today there are websites that can support every view you have,” Brassington said. “I work with people who have eating disorders. They might take a break in the session, walk down the hall, turn on the computer and go to a pro-anorexia website. It will teach you how to be anorexic. It will have contests for skinny people. So if you want to find an opinion that supports your view of your team, you can.”

Meaning, back in the day, how could you really enjoy getting angry at Kyle Williams, if there was no one around to agree with you?

Everything Brassington just mentioned, and he emphasized this, would be taken with a grain of salt by the emotionally healthy individual who just witnessed his team losing. One might feel it but feel it for a moment. Maybe hang onto it for a couple hours and then let it go.

“The vast majority of people,” he said, “would take it that way.” End of story. End of drama.

“But let's say a person has trouble at home or at work,” Brassington said. “Maybe there's a lingering illness in the family. He has trouble falling asleep at night. All he talks about is his team. The only positive outlet for him is his team.”

And his team loses the opportunity to go to the Super Bowl because one player muffs a punt and fumbles another. Brassington once treated an NBA fan who committed domestic violence because his team was losing.

“He was in treatment for some time,” Brassington said.

It's tricky, Brassington said, to prevent the violent act or the violent threat.

“The person will say that he's just enjoying his team and he doesn't have a problem,” Brassington said. “But if his family, friends or co-workers see that all the conversations they have with him eventually lead back to discussions about his team, they'll think otherwise.”

One of his most successful strategies for the unhealthy, obsessed fan is to get that person to rechannel his enthusiasms in a different direction. Find an outlet. Redirect. Reapply that focus. Exercise, he has seen, often works.

“When parents start to push their kids too hard,” Brassington said, “I tell those parents they need to do something competitive themselves, to see how hard it is to compete. So if your kid is a runner, do a 10K. You'll learn to appreciate the physical task, whatever it is. And you'll learn some empathy for your kid.”

And you'll learn to back off, away from something irrational that may never be taken back. To Brassington, that's the end game. Enjoy your team. Wear that jersey. Call Patrick Willis by his first name even if you have never met him. Feel crushed by last Sunday. It's OK. It's understandable. But notice that Monday comes and the sun shines for everyone, even Kyle Williams, if you give him a chance.

“Lose yourself for a day,” Brassington said, “but not for a lifetime.”

That was an aphorism, Brassington said, he used for the first time. He might use it again.

For more North Bay sports go to Bob Padecky's blog at padecky.blogs.pressdemo

crat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5223 or bob.padecky @pressdemocrat.com.