Look old fart... Not sure when over 40 became kiddo... Anyway, a fight on a football field could easily be considered battery or breach of the peace. Left uncontrolled they can become dangerously violent. It can insight issues amongst the crowds. It could turn into a Columbian soccer match.
I wonder who is trained best to calm violent situations at the stadium? The LEO with literally hundreds of hours of training or the tool in the polyester zebra outfit with a yellow handkerchief? If the SWAT team sniper comes repelling in from the top of the stadium butt stroking players that don't comply, sure maybe we should talk... But a uniformed sworn officer is less likely to shoot someone than a player at a sporting event...
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/feb/16/referee-shot-dead-by-player-sent-off-argentina
Police are at football games to preserve the peace. If a fight breaks out on the football field you cannot ask sworn police officers not to try and calm the situation. It's akin to asking them not to break up a fistfight between a couple of kids, because "nobody is going to get really hurt." LEO have a different fight or flight instinct than most.
The biggest slap in the face is the idea that an LEO would just whip out the old gun and shoot a player. Have you ever watched police in riot control? They take attacks with sticks, rocks, and worse at times and still don't start shooting.Police are highly trained in crowd control situations and are smart enough to know that a football player probably isn't strapped. So unless a player was trying to take the officers weapon or beat him to death with a helmet, the gun isn't coming out. Hell I had a former SGT that wrestled with a crackhead for his own weapon for over 10 minutes until backup arrived and nobody got shot.
All of these negligent or questionable shootings we read about, involve much more nuanced situations where usually a suspect is armed or perceived to be, with a deadly weapon. They usually fit a description of a dangerous criminal and the officer is on high alert. There is a complete different element... Ask any cop, he/she is a thousand times more happy to break up a fight on a football field than to get a domestic disturbance call at 12:30 am.
I have searched everywhere for an instance of LEO shooting a player on a football field and found nothing. Maybe it's happened, in the teens of millions of games played throughout history, but it's a much lower risk than an FBI agent shooting you after doing a backflip on the dance floor from what I can tell.
