BYU students lack color scheme
BYU students do not lack spirit, but they lack the tradition upon which collegiate powerhouses are founded. Anyone who has ever attended an athletic event for any major conference school such as Duke, Florida, or even Utah, notices the different feeling, which is felt at such games. The unique factor that sets other schools different from our own is the unity amongst the fans. This is most easily seen by the attire at football games. BYU is one of the few places that can boast of such a lack of agreement with any one color at sporting matches. If cougar fans were to unite and all wear one color, than our presence would be that much more encouraging to the school and the teams. The solution: the BYU athletic department should distribute a uniform t-shirt with each All-Sports pass sold. Thus, each student in the student section can look just like the one next to him or herself, and the student body on the whole would look brilliant.
Jeff Hill
Centennial, CO
Respect the program
Am I the only one here, or does anyone else think it is strange that the only NCAA Womens Basketball teams with one loss or fewer are ranked 1, 2, 3, and (wait for it…) 18?! I am sick of seeing our school disrespected in the polls, and given no good reason for it. I wish it was as easy as saying that the “good ol’ boys” (and “gals” apparently) who put together the polls simply disrespect the “lesser conference” we are in, but that argument doesn’t fly, when 16th ranked New Mexico (um… also in our conference) loses two games in a row and only drops four spots, while our girls win against them and only move up one. This is no isolated incident either. Most recently are the ’96 and ’01 Football years, the ’03 Men’s basketball season, and numerous Women’s basketball seasons. It’s time our programs are given the respect they deserve!
Nathan Cramer
Naknek, Alaska
Super Bowl refs robbed Seahawks
Seahawk fans, don’t be too disappointed about Sunday nights loss in the super bowl. Chances are, they were never going to win that game no matter how they played. I say that because the game was not determined by the players of either team, but by biased referees who made bogus calls every time it looked like Seattle might take the lead. The NFL wanted Jerome Bettis to retire a hero so Americans would get a heartwarming feel good story, and they made sure that’s what we got. It shouldn’t be too big of a surprise that the referees purposely robbed Seattle of a title. The NFL knows that Pittsburg merchandise is more marketable than Seattle’s. A Seattle win would have been a monetary loss for the NFL, and the corporocracy that runs the league would never let that happen. Am I a bitter fan? Absolutely, and you should be too because it’s sad when the NFL champions are determined by the referees and not by the players playing in the game.
Erik Simmons
Kennewick, WA
Fan cheers cheapen games
On Thursday, I attended the BYU women’s basketball game against New Mexico, and the next night I was there when our men’s volleyball team played Pepperdine. On both nights, the Cougars recorded impressive victories over the toughest competition they have faced yet this season.
I love BYU sports and am excited about the success of our teams. But both games were cheapened slightly by a number of fans who chanted “overrated” at the teams we were beating. This chant makes no sense; while it’s true that BYU beat a higher-ranked team on both nights, the difference was small: #19 over #16 in basketball, #2 over #1 in volleyball. If you were betting on these games (you shouldn’t, of course), BYU would have been favored in both as the home team.
But regardless of rankings, chanting “overrated” makes no sense. All it does is ensure that our teams fail to receive the credit they deserve for a big win, since the team they beat apparently wasn’t that great anyway. Even worse–what if the other team makes a comeback, and BYU loses? Then we can’t even beat an overrated team.
Instead of spending our energy and our voices focusing on the mishaps and failings of other teams, let’s cheer for the triumphs of ours.
Jeff Hofmann
Murray, Utah
