From somewhere down the thread someone wrote the following:


>There are topics related to homerism I'd love to see debated here.
>Colleges should have a unique focus on sports issues.  If serving the
>institution's primary purpose is the justification for allowing sport in
>college settings and promoting character in its student body is one of
>those primary objectives and "fair play" is one of principles sport is
>supposed to teach, why would promoting rather than reducing home field
>advantage be a strategy considered proper in academic settings?  That
>homefield advantage is a practical reality that can't be completely
>eliminated in favor of perfect fairness isn't the same as saying it
>should be promoted.


Fair play, to me, equals playing the game within the rules, with appropriate
sportsmanship thrown in.  Would you give up last line change at home in the
interest of "fair play?"  Or tell the opposing baseball team "nah, today you
guys get last ups." ??  I don't think so.

That said, I think that NCAA tournament homefield should be eliminated if
its ever fiscally possible.  It definitely benefitted us while I was at
Michigan, but that doesn't make it fair.

>Frankly, I think a college whose law school supported ethnic diversity
>in admissions when everyone else headed in the opposite direction is the
>ideal candidate to spearhead elimination of homefield advantage (that's
>*why* we let their band director dance).  And Arik, maybe the same
>fixation with the the Maize and Blue's arch-enemy of state institutions
>didn't exist when you were in Ann Arbor, but the chance to one-up
>Berkeley using a sport they don't even have is a huge chauvanistic
>coup.  We can't pass up chances like that.

I went to the business school.  Need I say more?

And while I'm all for free speech, you can have it in your house or on the
street corner and go to town.  Same with your cowbell.  But go to a rink,
where you purchase a ticket, which is a revocable license, which has terms
and conditions, and you forfeit your right to free speech in excahnge for
seeing the game. You forfeit your right to consume beer if it's an on-campus
NCAA event, blah blah blah.  Would you allow signs that say "F*(K player X
and his mother" in the name of free speech?  Where do you stand on schools
throwing out spectators for yelling similar things?  (My undergrad
institution is all over this one...)  Or to go a rhetorical end, how would
you feel about the maize and blue crowd, 100,000 strong at a football game
if it chose to chant "Hail to the victors valiant, Hitler really was our
hero, well, well, we'll kill the jews the next time around."

Not my sentiments, I'm Jewish.

So I say yell and scream all you want to support your team.  But you can't
have your cowbell.   If you want a cowbell, then get your school to get a
pep band, and make sure that they show up at every game.  Or bring it in to
your home games, if your school chooses to allow it.

More cowbell.........in front of your TV.


Arik
Cornell '91
Michigan '99