The author is ‘play-stabbed’ by a friend with a left behind shiv at Monday Night’s football game.

From the nosebleed seats of FedEx Field at this week’s Monday Night Football game, a row neighbor split his aluminum beer bottle in half, fashioned a shiv using the concrete ground as a sharpener and the bottleneck as the handle, and confronted a drunken, vulgar, heckling mess of a lady Eagles fan in front of him. This girl definitely helped further the reputation Philadelphia fans have for being the worst in all of sports. As she egged the clearly agitated Washington fan on, she offered him to the chance to grab her boob— Cup it, really get your fingers under there” —to escalate or diffuse the situation depending on how one would react to such an offer. On second thought, maybe Philly fans are the best! But he did not like the suggestion.

Thankfully the shiv remained sheathed, clenched at the side of my seatmate before the eventual intervention of a security guard. The threat of removal and realization that he may not be able to keep himself from slashing his new friend should he have stuck around led him to leave Section 451 on his own accord. For a full recount of the action off the field, check out my account on Washington Post’s Sports Bog. Deadspin picked up a friend’s secondhand retelling of the story.

Have those 16-ounce aluminum bottles now popularized for sale at sporting events gotten to be too much of a hazard? They keep the beer so much cooler for longer than their plastic predecessors! But the plastic ones can’t be transformed into a jagged piece of metal when you get angry at the other team’s fans. They’re pretty safe if dispensed sans cap, ensuring a full, sealed vessel can’t be slung down on other fans or players. Glass bottles, with their obvious ability to be used as an improvised weapon, have long been out of service. Then again, you didn’t used to have to go through a security screening to get into a game, so actual knives could make their way in. At an infamous stadium riot—ten cent beer night at a 1974 Cleveland Indians baseball game— fans threw bottles (I assume glass ones) and rushed the field with knives, chains, and broken off pieces of stadium seats. And sporting venues: Though they may be really safe, just please don’t go back to the days of cups of draft beer covered by leaky cellophane tops. If you’ve never seen them at a stadium, they’re like today’s bubble tea toppers and really leaky.

But, back to Monday night. Thankfully, the makeshift knife wasn’t even pulled. And aluminum being a soft metal, I’m not sure how much damage could be actually done with it. No one wants to be stabbed with ductile Bud Light bottle, but it’s (probably) not a deadly weapon.

While it’s very unlikely you’ll be stabbed with anything should you go to an NFL game, it can still be a harrowing experience, especially depending on where you sit. On Monday night I had the pleasure of sitting in the lower bowl at FedEx Field for a while. Then the actual ticketholder of my seat came and bumped me out of it. The upper level is certainly a wilder, less intimate, vulnerable space. It’s massive, so you’re much further from an usher, security guard, or cop. Tickets are cheaper, so I’d venture to say the crowd is a younger, excitable demographic, possibly looking for a fight. You’re further away from the field, so you’re often not as into the game.

FedEx Field, like many stadiums, does have a number you can text to alert security personnel, though it could be more publicized. I looked around for it as the confrontation I witnessed on Monday night was escalating, but I didn’t see it anywhere and didn’t have it programmed into my phone. I have no idea how long the response time would be. Luckily, I did eventually spot two security guards who responded immediately and effectively as soon as I had gotten their attention.

I was a non-partisan observer on Monday night, not wearing either team’s colors. I felt above any possible confrontations so long as I didn’t step in between knife guy and the awful girl that was egging him on. But I’ve been threatened and gotten beer thrown at me for wearing an opposing team’s jersey, and I left my days of jawing at strangers cheering for different sports teams back in my teenage years.

Unfortunately, to many or at least some, the gameday experience is inexplicably tied to picking fights with people wearing different colored shirts. Boo, different shirt. Boo.