As the NCAA tournament came to a close on Monday night, a nation watched as a glowing Florida team and its legions of fans proudly celebrated amidst a sea of orange and blue banners and T-shirts inside the RCA Dome. Students across the country watched in envy, leading to the inevitable notion: "I wish that could be my school."
Throughout the tournament, I heard this wishful thinking vocalized a lot in conversations across AU's campus: "Dude, how cool would that be if AU were in the tournament?" "I would be so pumped if our team was awesome." And even, "How come our team is never that good?"
At most Division I colleges, sports teams are a source of pride and school spirit. Students love seeing their teams do well, especially when they're on hand to watch the game live.
But we're a fickle bunch. As much as we love our teams when they're winning, we love to complain about them when they aren't. When they're losing, we not only lose a sense of pride, but we stop supporting the home team altogether.
We leave the stands empty. We don't talk about them in between classes on the quad. Even worse, we run to some other team, one that's winning and getting some national attention, and start to support them instead.
But here's my question: How can we expect to build pride in our teams if we don't support them? How can we expect them to win if we're not there to cheer them on?
AU is one of the biggest offenders of this double-edged quandary. Just about everyone here wants our sports teams to be good, but nobody wants to actually watch them play if they aren't.
Take the basketball games, for example. Bender Arena has the capacity to seat 4,500 people, which may not seem like a lot compared with other Division I schools, but it seems even smaller when you average 1,500 fans a game for the season.
And that's our most widely-attended sport. Ever been to a tennis match? Not a lot of students there. Support for nearly all of our teams is pretty pathetic, as evidenced by the empty sidelines.
The Greeks and other student organizations may argue that their attendance at limited sporting events makes them "supporters" of our teams. However, showing up for an occasional basketball game with your fraternity and missing big chunks of the game hardly makes you a fan.
In fact, the only consistent source of support for our student athletes is the sideline encouragement they give each other. The track team is a near-constant fixture at home basketball games, painting their bodies and cheering loudly. The lacrosse and field hockey ladies go to each other's games, and the soccer and tennis teams are known to support each other as well.
So maybe we all just need to take a cue from our hard-working athletes who clearly say, "You show up for us and we'll show up for you." In the end, it's really all in our hands. If we start showing some pride in our sports teams, maybe they will give us something to be proud of.
