Vulgarity and bigotry are nothing to cheer about

Sporting News, The, Feb 5, 1996 by Mike DeCourcy

The game was out there, ready to begin, and Seth Greenberg merely wanted to give his Long Beach State team a last few messages to remember. So he opened the flaps of the marker board, and all the 49ers got a pretty good idea of what was waiting for them at New Mexico State.

On the face of the board, scrawled by some cretin who managed to get into the visiting locker room, was a statement violently mixing profanity and antisemitism that no doubt unsettled every person in the room.

New Mexico State's home-court advantage was enhanced. Mission accomplished . . . but not necessarily completed. Late in the game, a long Beach defeat already assured, a spectator in the NMSU student section called to Greenberg to "play the white boys" and take out some of the others. Only he didn't say others."

"It's not New Mexico State's fault," Greenberg says. "It's happening other places. It's a reminder there still is a lot of hate out there."

Only two days after that incident, Alabama-Birmingham played a Conference USA game at Memphis and afterward charged that fans in the student section behind the visitors' bench were taunting forwards James Bristow and Chris Lee by calling, "Hey, boy," throughout the game.

Coach Gene Bartow says, "To me, that's a racial remark. In my 34 years around the game, I just never heard anybody say, `Hey, boy,' like that. You read about what went on 20 years ago . . . but I just had never encountered anything like that."

Greenberg and Bartow happen to be two of the finest gentlemen in the game. So when Bartow says if Bristow had climbed over the bench to chase his heckler, "I'm not sure if I would have blamed him that much," it seems prudent to listen.

These two incidents are only the most recent. Last season in the Western Athletic Conference, Wyoming Coach Joby Wright alleged that fans at Texas-El Paso aimed racial slurs at him, and Brigham Young's team had its Mormon affiliation defamed by fans at Colorado State. Memphis Coach Larry Finch reacted to Bartow's comments by pointing out bow ugly the fans had been to hi: team just two weeks earlier at South Florida.

"Unfortunately," Greenberg says, "people think they're part of the game." Now, where do you suppose they got that idea?

So many colleges have placed their student sections directly behind the visiting benches, subtly imploring those who sit there to make the necessary ruckus to disrupt the enemy and generate a home-court advantage.

So many of those students have noticed the excessive media attention accorded groups like the "Dookies" at Duke and the "Antlers" at Missouri and longed for the same collective fame.

Too many of those students have come to believe vulgarity and bigotry are the surest means of accomplishing both goals.

"A lot of people are Duke wannabes, but the Duke fans do it in good humor," Greenberg says. "They don't do it with malice. They create a comic environment, whereas these other people take that same idea and create a hateful environment."

The NCAA rules committee designated sporting behavior as its sole "point of emphasis" for this season, and that is supposed to include what happens in the stands. There are too few places, though, where this garbage is not tolerated.

At Marquette, Athletic Director Bill Cords went into the stands a few weeks back to dissuade students from chanting a familiar two-syllable vulgarity at an opponent who committed a flagrant foul. The Southeastern Conference has a rule prohibiting members from placing the student body and pep band in proximity to the visitors' bench.

Those universities confronted with these charges too often react like those idiot TV critics who impugn every documentary about the holocaust of the Native American with the words "politically correct." They dismiss the message, which tells a truth they wish to subvert, and focus on the messenger.

A large part of the response from New Mexico State President J. Michael Orenduff to Greenberg's charges was a suggestion that the coach was out of line and denigrated NMSU and the state of New Mexico. "Ignoring this type of behavior is condoning it," Greenberg answered.

He suggests fans are well within the bounds of decorum when jeering an opponent who shoots an airball or a coach who has the nerve to dress differently o;r be bald. "But buying a ticket does not give a person the right to attack another human being."

A right? At too many schools, it's considered a duty.

Switching sides

When he was coaching at Southern Cal, George Raveling was a vocal critic of summer invitational camps for college prospects, such as the Nike All-american Camp. He talked about getting the NCAA involved in the business, which seemed like having the government run health care, but now he has a better idea.

He'll change the system from within. Raveling, who retired after a debilitating auto accident in the fall of 1994, accepted an offer from Nike to run its annual camp. He already is making changes, moving the players from a plush downtown Indianapolis hotel to more modest accommodations, and the competition from the RCA Dome to the campus of Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis.