“Fan” Behavior at an All-Time Low
Fan behavior at college games has come under some scrutiny in recent weeks. This season, the has SEC fined Tennessee and Arkansas for the fans storming the court after home wins over Florida, and when Georgetown knocked off Duke, fans there stormed the court as well. After Villanova’s recent win over Connecticut, fans stormed the court, and two students didn’t make out well; one couldn’t breathe for a few seconds from being trampled. At Gonzaga, fans have been urged to stop yelling “Brokeback Mountain” to opposing players (the movie is about homosexual cowboys).
The unfortunate reality is, long before this, fan behavior has been getting out of hand at college basketball games. In the last couple of years, fans at Kansas have made news with vulgar chants, as well as at Maryland, and we’ve been hearing about riots on college campuses after NCAA Tournament games involving the school. But that wasn’t even the beginning.
Now, the big question is, when does it ever stop? Is there any limit to the absurdity of what fans do at college basketball games nowadays?
College basketball games nowadays don’t just involve great talent and well-coached teams. Nowadays, part and parcel of the experience is seeing the state of America’s youth – and it’s not pretty. The worst thing is, I’m not just referring to fans storming the court after a win, sometimes running over players and/or coaches in the process.
It starts off with the introduction of the starting lineups. When the visiting team’s starters are announced, you first hear a certain four-letter word that doesn’t bear repeating here for every player. No matter if the road team is the No. 1 team in the nation, or if it’s a game in a lower conference; this happens wherever you go. That’s not the only place the word gets used; nowadays, I don’t ever want to hear Rock ‘N Roll Part 2 played at a game, because the fans will then add their own two words to the one that’s already in it. There have also been times where fans will yell an obscenity right in the middle of the national anthem.
But that’s not enough. Once the game gets going, there are all kinds of absurdities: comments get yelled out at a player or coach about something related to his name, appearance, the team’s uniforms, something that happened with a player – nothing is off limits. Duke fans are notorious for digging up anything they can find on opposing players, such as criminal records or other personal items, as items for ridiculing the opposition.
Near the end of a game last year, a UConn fan yelled out a threatening comment to a referee, which naturally made the campus police officers present focus squarely on him for a few minutes. And as if UConn hasn’t been involved in enough already, ESPN.com reported that a West Virginia “fan” told senior center Hilton Armstrong to “go back to Africa” during a recent contest. Earlier this year, Armstrong was the target of comments from a few Providence cheerleaders, who yelled, “you look like a giraffe” to him on more than one occasion.
Wait, there’s more. Hoopville recently received an e-mail from a reader wanting to know how to find out which officials are assigned to games for a particular week. The reason was not the same reason that the game notes for some teams mention the officials for the games – as a point of information. They want to have signs for the games that refer to the officials.
We’ll let you use your imagination to figure out what the signs would say. Here’s a hint: it probably won’t be to tell them they do a good job and that a fan would never realize they were even on the court by the end of the game.
Athletes tune it all out, as do the coaches and referees, but that’s not the point. The point is that there’s no reason for such behavior in the first place that is childish at best and very troubling at worst. This is all happening with young people – for that matter, even young kids whose ages are not even in double digits will join in the ridiculousness on some occasions. Kids do what they see, so when they see young adults engaging in this type of behavior without consequences, they will follow suit. Eventually, these kids who live for heckling players at games will probably wind up on the Dr. Phil show as parents trying to live vicariously through their kids in sports.
As evidence, this has trickled down to high school games as well, and that’s where another problem came into play once. In January, I was at a high school game in a suburb southwest of Boston, and heard a “fan” yell to a player on the visiting team, “go back to prison, number (player’s uniform number).” The player the barb was directed at is a young black male with cornrows.
People will say that we should chalk this up to the youth of the fans, but that’s no excuse. Perhaps we can write it off a little bit with high school kids, but college students are young adults and it’s high time they start acting like it. Even then, let’s think about everything that is said in response to doubters about this generation. This generation is supposed to have all the potential in the world. This generation is supposed to be incredibly wise beyond their years. This generation is supposed to be enlightened regarding race, gender and sexual orientation. This generation is supposed to be exemplary in all respects.
All the fan behavior mentioned – none of which can be written off as merely a couple of isolated incidents, because there are countless examples of it – stands in diametric opposition to this.
Coming to a game as a fan should mean cheering on your own team. Cheering on your team means exactly that – you cheer on your team, instead of deriding the other team and its players, coaches and staff. It means you celebrate a win by being happy the rest of the night – not by nearly killing other fans, as well as players and coaches. For all too many nowadays, it doesn’t involve any of that, and what it shows for the present and future of American society is not positive.
