The Idiosyncrasies of Sport

I went to the Syracuse game against Georgetown this afternoon. It was the first SU basketball game I have attended since last year's game against UMass in the NIT.

On that day against the Minutemen, I was sitting at half-court, broadcasting the contest on local Syracuse radio. Today, I had the privilege of just being a fan.

For most of my college career, I didn't get to go to games as a fan. Instead, I was usually covering it in some capacity, and I often had to be at the radio station during the game and didn't step foot in the Carrier Dome. When I got to go, I went in a suit, usually lugging heavy equipment through the Stadium Control entrance. And if I wasn't in a broadcast booth, I was sitting at a press row table with a bunch of people wearing credentials and typing on computers.

Today I had a chance to relive what a college basketball game is like for the common fan. There were so many things I noticed that I never had time to pay attention to during my college career.

Have you ever noticed how teams shoot around before games in their warm up gear? After the layup line, these guys just mess around. A couple guys practice free-throws, and you have an occasional guy working on a particular move or shot. But most of this is a charade. Most of them just dribble around and talk to each other. They're not even really doing anything. This warm up might as well be skipped. Just have the guys introduced and have them talk the court.

At Syracuse games, like at many others, they have male cheerleaders carry flags with each letter of the school's name on it and run around the court during time outs. At the dome, they have one big white flag with the Syracuse block "S", and then four cheerleaders carrying around orange flags with the letters C-U-S-E. It looks kind of funny when the five cheerleaders together run past the court, as it always read "S-C-U-S-E". I was thinking, what's Boeheim's 'scuse going to be if the team loses this one? Oh, and by the way, the guy with the "E" flag wiped out in the second half, so the "S-C-U-S" was running about a half court's length ahead of the E.

There are so many gimmicks, especially at basketball games, that I think I could win if I were selected. One of them required a fan randomly selected from the crowd to make a free-throw, a three-pointer, and a half court shot. If they hit all three, they'd win some prize, but they had to make them all in 30 seconds. I can tell you this, I'd hit the free-throw and the three-pointer in ten seconds, and I'd have 20 seconds to hoist up as many half court bombs as necessary before I'd eventually drain it. Apparently, they didn't want their contestant to win, because they picked a student who had absolutely no basketball skill flail around out there and get booed off Jim Boeheim court.

There was also one where they had a guy sit in a la-z-boy chair in the paint between the free-throw line and the baseline. They gave this man three chances to hit one shot to win a prize. Are you kidding? I could easily win this. He did on the third try.

The signs in the crowd are great. One guy had a sign that read "Your mother's a Hoya". I immaturely laughed at this for probably five minutes.

The student section tries all sorts of things to try and help their team and psyche out the opponent. I'd guess none of it really works, but everyone takes it very seriously. Arms up, fingers waggling, dead silence when Syracuse is at the free-throw line, even if the Orange shooter is facing the opposite basket. Orange towels waving for every three pointer or big shot. Bouncing up and down on every big SU dunk. And the chant "you, you, you, you, oooooon you" with accompanying point every time the opponent commits a foul, as if the player is unaware.

You can really attend any sporting event, barely watch the action and be entertained by your surroundings. As interesting as the game actually was (Syracuse won 98-94 in overtime but blew a double-digit second half lead to allow Georgetown to force the extra session) sporting events are filled with interesting and amusing entertainment. Usually the geeks like me are only focused on the game and are able to block everything else out. But when you see what else is going on around you, you really appreciate the idiosyncrasies of sport.