November 23 was a beautiful day for college football. The first weekend of Rivalry Week usually means fierce competition, where both teams play heartfelt football, no matter what their records were coming into the game.
Look at the Washington-Washington State game. Washington State was playing to lock up a Rose Bowl bid; Washington was trying to salvage a mediocre season. The underdog Huskies marched into WSU's stadium and won in a triple-overtime thriller.
If you were one Carolina to the south, you would have found the Clemson versus South Carolina game. Clemson won by seven points, ending South Carolina's chances of getting to a bowl game.
In my neck of the woods, we had Michigan-Ohio State. The Buckeyes trailed most of the game, but came back in the fourth quarter, sealing victory with a last-second end-zone interception.
Exciting stuff. And the post-game was like any other ordinary day-ordinary day in Chechnya.
Washington State fans pelted Washington players and fans with bottles, coins and trash. Riots at Clemson left a young girl and an old police officer injured. Ohio State fans who were already doused in pepper spray after they attacked police officers immediately following the game took to the streets and destroyed nine cars, setting fires, starting fights, receiving more pepper spray and eventually adding over 40 names to the Columbus, Ohio, criminal docket.
Who says Maryland fans have not contributed anything to college sports?
That was not all: In Hawaii, after a football game with Cincinnati, the fans stayed in their seats, but the players fought on the field, until police restrained them. And, in nearby Raleigh, N.C., following a victory over Florida State, mayhem ensued and several people were injured. A couple days earlier, West Virginia fans celebrated their road victory over Virginia Tech by destroying VT's facilities. Must have been something in the moonshine.
Must celebration always lead to stupidity? And it is stupidity: Ohio State won a spot in the national championship game, and their fans sullied those headlines by acting like hooligans. North Carolina State became the first ACC team to beat Florida State in back-to-back years--that's no reason to start a Brent Road-type celebration. The Hawaii and Cincinnati players were enjoying a football game in Hawaii--does life get any better than that? You do not need to be dumber than a dropout to act like a sports jerk, but if you find yourself doing so, it's a good sign that college may not be right for you.
A lot of talking heads and other young people were interviewed after Saturday's regional football riots/ Most of them were apologetic, suggesting that this was mostly overreaction by police to a bunch of kids who wanted to have a little fun. It was a lowering of the standards, citing the "stupid drunk student" rule that excuses the passionate reaction that American college students have to football. (The same is true in college basketball too, if you are attending a basketball-only school-and if you are reading this column, the odds are you do.) College students need to be held to a higher standard-their position on the ladder of society, and their efforts to claim to be "educated" warrant stricter scolding for such asinine acts.
Duke had its own idiotic post-game performances--after the 1992 national championship, and then again in March 1998, when students created diversion bonfires in order to stage a massive bonfire in Clocktower Quad. Footage of the 1992 fire was spliced into a nifty videotape running with police scanner audio. Even though Duke has had a rather timid past--and an even more timid present--a lot of schools use Duke's Cameron Crazies as justification for their un-sportsmanlike conduct, but they fail to draw the line between cleverness and rowdiness. (Insert elitist, state-school joke here.)
But where does bad sportsmanship start? A friend who has a young son told me that at junior league soccer games, during the post-game high-five procession, one team had spit on their hands before slapping hands. The kids did not think of that themselves--it was their fathers, it was their coaches or it was from watching or hearing about some group of rowdy older students acting in similar ways.
The sportsmanship problem is just like other crimes--as Rudy Giuliani taught us in New York, the way to fight big crime is to punish the smaller offenses and offenders before they try something greater. No one is arguing for strictness that leads to a police state, but take it from this former little league umpire-someone needs to punish these kids early and sternly, because the escalation from spitballs to brutality is quick.
None of this will make any part of football or basketball any less fun. Again, note the Cameron Crazies. So, get drunk, be merry. Cleverly taunt. Tear down the goalposts if the school will let you (and you can tell if the school will let you, because they will not have a squadron of police officers surrounding the field if goalpost removal is endorsed). But save the thuggery for the gridiron-don't sour your team's accomplishments with immaturity.
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