A guy you never heard of became the biggest hero in sports Friday night. His name is Zouheir, and he doesn’t want his last name to get out. ADVERTISING A guy you never heard of became the biggest hero in
A guy you never heard of became the biggest hero in sports Friday night. His name is Zouheir, and he doesn’t want his last name to get out.
That’s because terrorists don’t like it when their plots are foiled. Their attacks in Paris left more than 125 people dead and hundreds more injured.
The carnage would have been much worse if a suicide bomber had gotten into Stade de France, where Germany and France were playing a soccer match. Zouheir was the security guard who frisked a ticket-holder and discovered an explosive vest.
Police theorize the plan was for the bomber to detonate himself inside the stadium. The crowd would stampede for the gates, where another bomber would blow himself up in the middle of the panicked mass.
Thanks to Zouheir, the first bomber never got in.
“He did a terrific job,” Lou Marciani said.
Marciani’s the director of The National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) at the University of Southern Mississippi. Friday night’s attacks again raised the scariest of sports questions — could it happen here?
Of course it could. The real question is are we doing enough to stop a Paris-style attack?
The simple answer is you can never do enough, but we could do better.
I don’t pretend to be a security expert, but I have been to a few hundred sports events since 9/11. At many of them I was subjected to the same security procedures fans face.
A few were top-notch, but most were either spotty or a joke. One security guard’s idea of a pat-down consisted of looking at me while chewing a toothpick. I nicknamed him Ray for his apparent X-Ray vision.
A good litmus test has always been the presence of dogs, who are much more adept at sniffing out bombs than the average security guard.
You didn’t see them en force at NFL stadiums until Sunday. It shouldn’t have taken a tragedy in France for teams to call out the dogs.
Mike Greenberg of ESPN’s Mike & Mike radio show lamented their presence on Monday, saying he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a world where such security measures are necessary.
Nobody does, but I’m afraid we passed that idyllic point when two airplanes hit the Twin Towers. Now the NFL and other major sports leagues have security guidelines called “best practices,” to which they must adhere.
There are similar measures for colleges and high schools, where the most horrific scenarios lurk.
“As you look at the enemy and soft targets and the emotional impact,” Marciani said, “it would be young kids. We know that and are all working to tighten that up.”
His organization established “best practices” guidelines for high schools this spring. Marciani said they’ve been downloaded more than 2,000 times.
High schools can’t afford metal detectors at every entrance or the chemical-sniffing devices used at Super Bowls. But one problem at every level is the outsourcing of security.
Guys like Ray probably filled out an application and were handed a yellow jacket. Background checks are haphazard if they exist at all. A group of 13 private security firms met with NCS4 a few weeks ago to start working on industry-wide training guidelines.
“This is very important,” Marciani said. “I must say there is some inconsistency out there in background checks and training.”
Overall, he said leagues and schools have made tremendous progress on venue security in the past decade. But the best security is not going to stop every radicalized nutcase determined to do harm.
“You just keep doing the best you can,” Marciani said. “That’s all I can tell you.”
It was good enough on Friday night at Stade de France. I’d feel better about America’s prospects if we had a few more Zouheirs and not as many Rays.
