Empty seats, empty hearts

All Shook Up
    By Ryan Smith

Misery loves company, but as Icame out of the tunnel and looked into the Yale Bowl last Saturday, I could not have felt more alone. About a dozen students and one Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, were at the game. It was pouring rain, and at halftime a friend and I sought shelter under some scaffolding. We saw two more faces enter the stadium. They took our seats.

That game left me with no doubts: our football team will not win another game this season, and even if they miraculously do, there will be no students there to see it. Yalies just aren't excited about their own athletic programs.

There is nothing morally wrong with this. Everyone can't be a sports fan. Yet there is something inherently valuable about attending sports events in college, almost as valuable as the residential college system. It brings us together: even when you're rooting for a loser, it's your loser. Strange that everyone recognizes this value whenever Yale plays Harvard, while ignoring it the rest of the season.

Yalies often whine that most of our major sports programs--basketball, football, hockey--are perennial Ivy League cellar-dwellers, and that if the teams were better, attendance would rise as well. They long to be an Ohio State or a Michigan. We must realize, however, that success and fan support go together. Everyone prefers a winner--that's why so many people showed up to watch Armando Valdés, BK '01, take the Doodle Challenge--but at the same time no one likes a fairweather fan.

But there is more to the problem than intellectual Yalies who can't be bothered to put down their books and support their team. The community that the games strive to bring together are already fractured by the athletes themselves. Too many of them have turned inwards, withdrawing from the residential colleges and moving off campus into fraternity and sports-affiliated houses.

Since these athletes do not support the Yale community at large, many students opt to return the favor. That explains why so many of us have found the time to hear a singing group perform simply because a friend was a member but missed a basketball game to watch the X-Files.

Students start to get excited about Yale sports through programs like the Dawg Pound when they meet up with players who are just a tad too in-your-face. Take the baseball team and their new t-shirt slogan: "Let's F--king Go." What? Seeing players, crowded around the dinner table, wearing these shirts months before the start of the season does not make me want to cheer for them. Excuse me, Coach Stuper, but I'd like to buy a vowel.

It doesn't have to be this way. Consider Army. Last year I went to see Yale get orangutanged by the defenders of our nation. I did it knowing that we would lose, but with the expectation that a change of venue might be fun. I was not disappointed. Army cadets are required to attend all football games, and local fans line up outside the stadium to watch them march in at gametime. Not every cadet is wild about football, but you wouldn't know it from the way they enjoy being at the game.

There is no excuse for most Yalies' athletic apathy. Put off your Jane Austen reading, get drunk before the game, go to the Yale Bowl, and yell your head off. Love the atmosphere. Love the excitement. Love your friends and the guy ringing the cowbell and the blue, rat-like mascot jumping around the stands. Remember that there is no difference between Harvard weekend--which everyone enjoys--and every other game of the year except that we get excited about it. Every game in every sport could be The Game; our team doesn't magically get better. It's all a matter of attitude.

Maybe this means that we take a tip from Army and require students to attend home football games, or that we rent a caravan of busses and check out the Meadowlands next weekend when Yale football takes on Princeton. Imagine the residential colleges marching into the Bowl before every game, led by their masters proudly carrying the college flag. Imagine every game like the Harvard game. Stands packed with students. Every college with a tailgate.

Even if it didn't bring us a winning team, it would certainly be good for Yale. It would bring us together as a college. That doesn't mean that I expect us all to stand out in the rain to watch Yale fumble seven times, but wouldn't it be great if everyone did?

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