Generally I come out here and do my little schtick. I make with the ha-ha because this is sports and because it doesn't make one difference in the world.
But recent backlash around what exactly we owe our football team has gotten me angrier than Bob Knight in a sensitivity training course.
So let's drop the gloves and talk seriously about what we owe the football team.
This isn't anti-football. This is anti-elitism.
Real quick, real brief and just one time-the world doesn't owe you a thing, and anything you're lucky enough to get in this lifetime is what you make yourself.
And the football team, despite making a whole lotta nothing, still wants to complain about what the student body owes them. (Incidentally, Duke football games aren't like away games. Away games have the other team's fans at them. Wally Wade has nobody's fans at them.)
Maybe it's just me, but nowhere do I remember signing anything on my acceptance letter that said I must support the football team. And I can't recall ever meeting anybody who came to Duke for the great football atmosphere-you can't even say they've given our campus a better profile. In the past five seasons Duke football has made national headlines exactly three times: when the team went 0-11, thereby becoming the only winless team in the history of the ACC, when the women's lib advocate of women's lib advocates advised Ms. Mercer to give cheerleading a try, and when one of our players robbed a man in a wheelchair.
But it amazes me that after all this University gives the football team, they still want to talk about what we owe.
Now that's owe, as in to pay, as in what we non-football players do to come here and what the football team doesn't because they're all receiving $35,000 scholarships. The NCAA allows 83 scholarships. Mutliply that by 35K and that's roughly $3 million a year spent on scholarships alone for the worst football team money can buy, and we still owe you? That $3 million could be better invested in academics-those being what the school is actually here for, you might recall-or you could blow the wad on Ho-Ho's and plastic hula girls and it'd probably be money better spent.
So please forgive those of us who will be spending the next five years of our lives paying off student loans if the tears ain't exactly welling up.
Speaking of welling up, some people want to complain about the sink dripping in their apartment. One wonders, would that be the Central Campus apartment you got as a sophomore courtesy of the preferential housing that football and basketball players get?
Again, there's a tear duct, there's a lack of production, there are those of us who had to suck it up and live in Trent and Edens sophomore year and closets on West junior year. And ya know what? I'm not complaining about that. Believe it or not, some of us realize that we're lucky to be here.
And if it's "Back Duke or Back Off," like the ever-witty sign says, what is it about the football team that makes it so special? Why is it we owe the football team something that we don't owe, say, the women's tennis team? They won 116 straight ACC matches and if you looked at the stands you'd think somebody were screening a Dennis Rodman movie marathon.
Gene Keady's comb-over does a better job covering his bald head than the Back Duke or Back Off argument does of explaining why we should go out in droves for Duke football.
It's elitism. The reason is just because and you sure better have a better reason than that.
The football team loves to whine about how nobody supports them even though they're, ahem, "representing" our school. Wanna tell me where our chuckleberries in pads are during tennis matches or lacrosse games or other sports we actually win at?
Just don't try and pretend it's about something it isn't. If it's really about supporting Duke and supporting your fellow students then where is the football team at every other Duke event?
Welcome to Duke. We're all busy all the time. Deal with it.
If somebody wanted to complain about attendance, it should be the women's basketball team. They've got the best coach in all of college basketball and a top-3 team this year and they're still more than likely not going to get as many people as a single football game.
But you don't hear them complaining, because Coach Gail Goestenkors knows, Coach Jamie Ashworth knows, everybody but the football team knows that respect is something you earn, and at the end of the day all you can do is your job and let the rest take care of itself.
And it's not that I'm against the football team getting all the special treatment that they do-they do, even at 0-8, deserve it. And I'm not against athletes in general getting special treatment with scholarships and housing. In fact, I'd prefer to see all our athletes get the same treatment the football team does because they sure deserve it.
But I can't sit here and listen to the football team whine when they've been given the whole world on a platter. They're going to walk out of here with a Duke degree after four or five years of being treated better than any of us probably ever will and yet they've got the nerve to complain that students don't come out to watch a miserable football season get more miserable.
Yeah, it's a showcase sport in other parts of the world. But 2,000 people showed up for our first game, one-third of our whole student body. You just can't ask for more than that.
You want respect? You don't get it on the edit pages of the Chronicle. There's only one place to earn it. It's called the field. Now shut up and win a game.
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