There are some public places I’d never bring a kid.

A crowded bar late at night.

A theater showing a “Saw” film festival.

An NFL game.

You know, where guys throw the ol’ pigskin around and fans get to root, root, root for the home team?

No way, no how.

I went to the Bills-Raiders game in Buffalo last weekend, and I can only shudder to think what goes on at Raiders home games.

Please understand, I’m not a prig. We had a blast. When I pay for a ticket to a pro sporting event, I’m no longer an objective, barnacle-like reporter, but a loudmouth fan like everyone else. I have a few $9 beers, and love pretty much the whole scene, even (especially?) the goofy, inventive, passionate, endearing and sometimes dopy behavior of the real diehards.

These are my people.

I’ve seen all four of the mainstream pro sports in person. For the first time, though, I noticed that there didn’t appear to be anyone under the age of, I don’t know, 16 years old? There wasn’t a seat to be had in 74,000-seat capacity Ralph Wilson Stadium, and as far as I could see, there weren’t any kids.

Captain Hook to the white courtesy phone, please.

I can’t blame parents who prefer not to expose their young ones to the sideshows at an NFL game.

Sure, there are fights and loutish, even criminal, behavior at other sporting events, including college, high school, pee wee, you name it. Anytime you get tens of thousands of people in an enclosed space, with two sides polarized by tribal allegiances, and inhibitions unharnessed by alcohol, stuff happens. Stupid stuff.

NFL games seem to harbor this type of behavior as a matter of course, though.

I believe a lot of that has to do with the fact that the NFL plays just once a week, and mostly on Sundays, when people are off from work. Like a tidal wave, there’s this buildup of stress during the week, then a daylong catharsis where just about anything goes. There’s some regularity and frequency to the other sports that dissipates that tension, but the culture of the NFL commands that everything happen on some epic scale.

So when an annoying, skinny dude in a Raiders hat and jersey continually stands up, turns around and baits an entire section of Bills fans, it isn’t enough to tell him to shut up and go home, or some such pearl of wit and wisdom. Somebody, some hero, has to hit him in the side of the head with a half cup of beer, which a guy a few rows in front of us did with about a quarter to play.

He proudly accepted his ejection, waving the double bird at the Raiders guy on the way out, and missed an amazing fourth-quarter comeback by the Bills.

As we walked toward a massive bottleneck at the security checkpoint for our gate (we missed the first four minutes of the game because of this), my brother-in-law Jeff, a lifelong Buffalonian, wistfully talked about how much he’d like to bring his older son, who’s 3, to see their beloved Bills someday.

A University of Buffalo home game sounded like a better idea. Another option, he said, is the Buffalo Sabres, whose games at HSBC Arena draw a profoundly different type of crowd and generate an atmosphere that isn’t intimidating or scary to kids.

That’s a shame.

It’s also the truth, in a league that is for grownups only.

Nowhere does it say that you have to actually act like one.