BRAVO, MARK!

I am getting ornery too in my old age.  I heard some of that same 
broadcast, and was disgusted by it.  I also heard last weekend some 
University of Minnesota - Duluth announcers (not a school broadcast) 
saying that they just wanted to see anyone beat Minnesota (meaning the 
Gophers).

Now I am a Gopher fan and have been for over 25 years.  And I will be 
the first to say that Holy Cross deserved to win on Friday night.  The 
Gophers did not.

For me, I think the broadcasters are just picking up a general behavior 
that has been increasing amongst the student body's and fans of each 
school.  With each passing year, the students, bands and some of the 
fans are getting more and more abusive and disrespectful, and not 
behaving in a way that I was brought up to believe was "good 
sportsmanship."   I just am not buying it anymore that this kind of 
behavior makes a venue "intimidating" to the visiting team and helps 
the home team win.  It is just plain and simple disgusting.

For me, if the NCAA REALLY wants to promote in the leagues non-abusive 
and hostile themes, maybe they should stop looking at mascots and start 
focusing on campus behaviors that are becoming increasingly abusive and 
hostile.

Thank you for your thoughts, Mark.

Kathy
Go Gophers!
(waiting for October)


On Saturday, March 25, 2006, at 09:41  PM, Mark Lewin wrote:
>  I decided to link to the North Dakota link to listen to the
> UND-Michigan game. I was struck by the totally unprofessional effort 
> on the
> part of the UND announcers.  This was not a school radio station and 
> these
> were not student announcers. These were supposed professionals. I'm not
> naive enough to believe that local sports announcers should act 
> impartial.
> These announcers were pro UND and that's fine. Where I thought they 
> stepped
> over the line was when they started belittling anything that wasn't 
> UND.
> They made a point of questioning the competance of the eastern 
> referees by
> belittling eastern referees in general. They went on to promote a UND
> freshman as the legitimate WCHA rookie of the year by stating that the
> actual WCHA rookie of the year wasn't nearly as good as the UND 
> candidate.
> They stated that the Grand Forks regional was sold out but there would
> probably be plenty of tickets available for the regional finals the 
> next day
> and to just look for the people with the big M on their jerseys.  They 
> went
> on to refer to Minnesota several times as the Golden boys or the Golden
> Goofs and topped things off by stating that Minnesota should be 
> ashamed of
> embarrassing the rest of the WCHA by losing to an Atlantic Hockey 
> team.  I'm
> sorry. You can root for your team all you want, but if you have a 
> microphone
> in front of you, you are representing your team and your community and 
> you
> should make some effort to be dignified and professional.
>
> Tonight, I'll listen to the final.  I'll be listening to the Holy Cross
> broadcast.
>
> Maybe I'm just getting ornery in my old age!!!
>