The March 3rd edition of Sports Illustrated is outstanding (except for the fact that Jason Kidd is on the cover). The back page features a great piece about a man who beat MJ in one-on-one, and Grant Wahl's article about Abusive Fans in College Hoops is really eye-opening and has a very strong and relevant message. This is a must-read article for any sports fan.
Those of us who grew up playing and watching sports understand that athletics can be a great vehicle for learning and community building. However, when you think about how highly universities value their athletic programs, and then you read some of the incidents from Wahl's article, you begin to understand why so many people on college campuses have a problem with athletics. Imagine not really understanding much about college basketball tradition, going to your first game as a freshman at a university, and seeing your peers (at what is supposed to be an institution of higher learning) harassing the grandmother of an opposing player (calling her a whore) to the point that she starts to cry. You'd probably be embarassed, and you'd probably wonder why your school and its alumni value this tradition so highly.
No amateur athlete should have to deal with the kind of abuse that Kevin Love and Eric Gordon have endured this season, and certainly no athlete anywhere should have to worry about the safety of his or her family as they sit in the stands at a game. I'm certainly not suggesting that cheering and rowdy fan sections should be taken out of the equation. But, hearing that these families had to come to the game with security, and despite this security a mother was still hit by objects being thrown and not a single student was asked to leave makes me wonder about how out of control the situation has become. Schools need to start being tough on this if they want to keep the integrity of college sports intact. Perhaps the most powerful piece from the whole article is the quote from Tom Izzo, who says that this problem will eventually ruin college basketball if it's not remedied. Apologies for getting soapboxy, but it's a really good article.
2 comments:
Very interesting article from SI for a lot of reasons...
1. It talked about race, homophobia, and free speech but didn't even mention the role of drinking or the lack of supervision by the colleges. I mean, give me a break. The problem is not a bunch of racist or homophobic fans; these yahoos are the minority of misbehaved fans. It's really a a bunch of kids who drank too much and the colleges that let them get away with it every weekend.
2. Again, the author just dug up dirt and dn't provide solutions to "the problem" at hand. Why don't they criticize the schools that let these fans get away with this behavior? If schools can issue tickets, why can't they take them away?
3. The article failed to make a connection to poorly behaved fans in all sports, not just college basketball. Go to a Jets game and tell me fans aren't misbehaved everywhere....
5. The author cited some of the worst fans in college basketball, but neglected some of the best fans which don't do this type of stuff. In fact, most games have friendly bantering going on and not the type of stuff that happened here....
5. This behavior is deplorable, but to a certain extent, fans will be fans.
- get better security
- have the schools police games better
- make conduct a requirement for attendence
- allow students to be suspended for bad behavior or even arrested
- don't over-react to fans being fans
Very valid points. For example, Gordon's father says in the article that this wasn't a problem until they got to Illinois. And, like you said, this isn't something that is out of control everywhere. However, I think there is a big responsibility on those schools to crack down now. The more it is allowed, the more it will spread. Finally, I think that pro athletes taking abuse is fine for the most part. I mean, their families shouldn't be harrased in the stands. But, pro athletes are entertainers in a show. I don't have a problem with a lot of the stuff that happens. Obviously, racial/homophobic stuff is unacceptable anywhere, but I think that a pro athlete getting a hard time after changing teams during free agency is different than a college kid who made a decision about his education.
Post a Comment