CU Fans in the Wall Street Journal

It's not exactly the "Screw BU, Yale too!" cheer that I remember, but we're listed among the more notable fans...

Ken '71

[Q]
WSJ.com - THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Online

December 26, 2003


TASTE


Dis, Boom, Bah

By MARK YOST

"For the first time ever, I was fearful for my safety."

That's not a quote from Hillary Clinton after her recent tour of Afghanistan. It's from an Ohio State football fan who had to walk across the quadrangle at the University of Wisconsin.

"I have never had such an unpleasant experience on any campus," Nancy Moore wrote in an e-mail message to Wisconsin Chancellor John Wiley following Wisconsin's 17-10 upset victory over Ohio State earlier this year. "We were showered with profanities and harassed the entire time we were on campus."

As America gears up for its annual holiday bowl bonanza, the big question seems to be: How will USC get the justice it deserves -- and why is Oklahoma playing for No. 1? But another question is more pertinent: What happened to the "collegial" part of college sports?

In a surrounding culture not exactly known for gentility, college sports fans are showing themselves to be as shrill and infantile, as inclined to trash talk and coarse invective, as any cuckolded husband on "Jerry Springer," if less restrained. Some of the obnoxiousness has turned violent, for example in large-scale riots at Michigan State, Penn State and the University of Maryland. A lot of it is literally in the air, turning stadiums and arenas into profanity's echo chambers or, at the least, places where the normal razz and rah of college games loses all claims to good-humored sportsmanship.

Hockey fans are among the worst offenders. At University of Michigan games, fans cheer "See Ya, M-----f----r" as opponents enter the penalty box. At the University of Minnesota, female fans irrelevantly stand and yell: "Give me an S! Give me an E! Give me an X! What's that spell? What's that spell?" Fans moronically follow along like lemmings (those who can figure out the answer). When the University of Denver plays archrival Colorado College, fans routinely chant "CC sucks!" Cornell fans hate Boston University so much that at a recent game in New Haven they chanted "BU sucks, BU sucks, BU sucks . . . and so does Yale."

The Algonquin Roundtable this is not.

College basketball has its share of louts as well. Visiting teams hate traveling to Syracuse's Carrier Dome, Kentucky's Rupp Arena and Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, all places where the fans are packed so close to the floor that the taunts are not only vulgar but personal. The most infamous are Duke's Cameron Crazies, who once taunted Maryland's Herman Veal, who had been accused of sexually assaulting another student, by tossing women's underwear and inflated condoms onto the court. One sign in the student section read: "Hey Herm, Did You Send Her Flowers Afterward?"

College football fans, more than 90,000 of them in some places, are not famous for their reticence, and even players are getting in on the act. At an Oct. 25 game against Washington State, visiting Oregon State couldn't wait to get on the field to do its trash talking; the players taunted their hosts in the tunnel before the game. (The Huskies got their revenge, beating the Beavers 36-30.)

Wisconsin, which will play the Auburn Tigers in the Music City Bowl on New Year's eve, is just the latest school to join the ranks of the notorious. At football games this fall, fans regularly doused officials with beer and pelted visitor buses with eggs as they left town -- sometimes with a police escort.

And it wasn't just the Wisconsin-Ohio State game that brought out the abusive side of Badger fans. Chancellor Wiley received a host of complaints from visiting fans after the Purdue game in October. They said they were taunted and harassed in Camp Randall Stadium and in the parking lot, as they walked to their cars. "People felt unsafe, like people were trying to goad them into fights," said Steve Malchow, assistant athletic director for communications at Wisconsin.

What to do? In March 2000, when Michigan State lost to Duke in the NCAA Final Four, thousands of angry fans charged into the streets of East Lansing smashing store windows and setting police cars on fire. Since then, the school has tried to crack down on wayward behavior, going so far as charging women who bear their breasts to the crowd with attempting to incite a riot. The school's disciplinary councils now include off-campus behavior. It has been "a great deterrent," says Terry Denbow, vice president of university relations at Michigan State.

Other schools have made personal appeals, asking fans to think about the reputation of the school. Before the start of this year's Michigan ice-hockey season, Red Berenson, who has coached the team for 20 years, sent a letter to season ticketholders asking them to clean up their language and stop using the "See Ya" chant.

"The vulgarity of the add-on," he wrote, referring to the profanity that ends the chant, "detracts from the excitement of the competition, offends the overwhelming majority of the fans in attendance and adds nothing of value to the experience of Michigan hockey." Before the home opener, he even went to center ice -- with his young grandson in tow -- and appealed to the fans' sense of decency.

Wisconsin has taken a similar tack. Chancellor Wiley and UW police chief Susan Riseling went door to door in student neighborhoods following the Purdue and Ohio State games, asking for cooperation and better conduct. Fan behavior was a major topic at last year's winter meetings of the Big Ten, which produced a number of public-service announcements promoting good sportsmanship. These began airing this year on stadium Jumbotrons.

It's pathetic that such pleading seems necessary. When things go right, it's hard to beat the atmosphere of a college sporting event, and not just because a pep band and real cheerleaders add to the noise. There is a refreshing intensity to the fans' rooting interest. Nothing in pro sports compares with it. And it doesn't have to go out of bounds.

At the University of Nebraska, fans regularly clap for the visiting team if they go into the locker room at halftime with the lead. Notre Dame fans, while not exactly modest about their teams' prowess, are well-known for the hospitality they extend to visiting fans. Even Duke's notorious Crazies have shown that they can be creative without being insulting. They once used a fishing pole to dangle a box of chicken McNuggets in front of 360-pound Florida State center Nigel Dixon. Once, after being scolded by the administration for their antics, the Crazies showed up at the next game -- against archenemy North Carolina -- with signs that read "A Warm and Hearty Welcome to Dean Smith" and "Welcome Fellow Scholars."

Even college hockey has its warm side. At many arenas, when the visiting team finishes serving a penalty, the announcer says they're "back at full strength." While at Michigan, Minnesota and other schools, fans shout, "They never were!", at Wisconsin they merely say: "That's debatable." In Minnesota, when the announcer says that there is one minute remaining in the period, fans often reply: "Thank you." On rare occasions, the announcer will say: "You're welcome."

OK, maybe that's going too far in the other direction.
[/Q]

I'm fairly sure the author misheard/misremembered "Screw BU, Yale too!". Ken, you should send the author a correction. It probably won't do any good, but what the hell.

Funny how a guy named Yost is criticizing how Michigan deals with its fans' profanities.

I don't get the Minnesota "Give me an S! Give me an E! Give me an X! What's that spell? What's that spell?" cheer. What's the joke there? Minnesota players and fans aren't getting laid?

Screw BU, Wall Street Journal, too!

That said, the Wall Street Journal is my favorite daily. They had a great article today about the Asian entrepreneurs acquiring American and Japanese brands.

It's on the order of Vicor Kiam and the Remington razor. "I liked the Nakamichi products so much I bought the company." (And now all the gear is made in China.)

This will answer your question about that Minnesota Cheer.

[www.prideonice.com]

Ah...sex is equated with scoring. And here I thought they were trying to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, Minnesota students can spell short, monosyllabic words.

The guy didn't even get his positive cheers at the end of the article right. Kinda shoddy reporting, I'm wondering how many others he generalized, getting the intent but missing the specifics.

Nebraska fans don't cheer the opposition at halftime. They cheer the opposition as they walk off the field after the game, win or lose.

Ma know sill ab ick -- clap clap clap clap clap