How often do home fans insult fellow home fans? This year I had the opportunity to witness Harvard-Cornell at Lynah= Rink in Ithaca. As usual, Big Red fans (mostly students wearing the free= "Screw BU and Harvard too" T-shirts) littered the ice during the introductions= by tossing a ton of fish at the Harvard players. They then threw their newspapers (which they pretend to read during visiting intros) onto= the ice. Some even continued to hurl stuff during the national anthem.= Anyway, during the five minutes or so it took to clean up the ice, the public address announcer (Hockey-L's own Arthur Mintz) frequently issued= the "Throw stuff again and Cornell gets a penalty" announcement, spoken= of course more eloquently than the above paraphrasing. The fans behaved themselves for one period, and the game was scoreless.= As Harvard came out for the second period warmup, four or five more= fish were tossed at the players. Goalie Tripp Tracy deftly stickhandled one unfortunate creature over to the officials, who showed no hesitation= in issuing the Cornell bench penalty. The Crimson scored on the power= play to go up, 1-0, and the crowd berated their fellow Big Red fans responsible= for the fish-throwing, standing and pointing "It's all your fault!" as= well as shouting frequently heard Lynah vulgarities at the deviants in Section= 8. Incidentally, Harvard won the game, 2-1. I have two questions: 1) Why is "Screw BU and Harvard too" so popular as a chant at Lynah? 2) Why are fans (at Cornell and elsewhere) permitted to throw stuff= on the ice even the first time, especially when everyone knows it's going= to occur? The danger is not so great in a player getting hit as it is= in residue being left on the ice and causing a player to twist an ankle= or knee. Didn't some school (UNH perhaps) once have a tradition of throwing stuff on the ice that was curtailed when refs refused to tolerate= the first offense with a mere warning? =8BMike J. (Princeton =B992) ******************************************************** "Sophomore dies in kiln explosion? Oh my God. I just talked to her= last week. She was going to make me a pot." --Otter, "Animal House" ********************************************************