Rush The Court

Over the years we have heard a lot of stories about fans (particularly parents of young children at games) and school administrations (even at Duke) getting on the student section for their crude language and poor behavior, but we have never heard about students publicly criticizing other students about their behavior at sporting events (or, “sports games”). As they say, there is a first time for everything, as the editorial staff at The Daily Campus, an independent student paper for Connecticut, published an editorial today criticizing students for “displaying poor sportsmanship and little respect” toward opposing teams and specifically cites fans at the men’s basketball games. Essentially the editors are asking the student section to display the same respect and courtesy afforded to Jim Calhoun and Kemba Walker to the other team no matter what the letters on the front of that uniform say. Judging from the reader comments at the bottom of the article, I don’t think this will go over too well in Storrs.

While I agree that fans occasionally go over the line (and I had multiple discussions with a certain friend in college about this — I will spare you the rather interesting details that he would divulge to the opposing team and crowd), I am having a hard time figuring out what the UConn fans did to deserve a reprimand from their fellow students. I have been to several UConn games over the past few years (both at Storrs and Hartford) and have found the fans to be pretty reasonable. Sure, there may be a choice comment or two from the fans that might offend the opera crowd, but I don’t think anybody can reasonably expect a PBS conversation at a sporting event of this caliber. Now if I hear that sort of stuff at a Little League baseball game, I might be a little more concerned. Quite simply, Gampel and the XL Center have been two of the more pleasant places I have been to watch a game at recently, and no, I am not going to list the places that might be less friendly to a child’s ears. We doubt that this article will generate any real change except to flood the paper’s e-mail inbox, but it is worth a read if only for its naivete.