Time for the student section to be just that

By Joshua D Scroggin

If you sit in the student section at men’s games in the Save Mart Center, some old-and-moldy, blue-haired basketball booster is calling you lazy.

That’s right. You may remember him from such occasions as the time he told you to sit down because you were blocking his view at Selland Arena.

You’re not in his way anymore, but he’s still complaining.

While most of the students who live in or around campus were home for the holidays, the fickle Fresno State contingency was bashing them for not showing up to basketball games.

“ They’re not filling the arena,” the contingency whined. “That’s why we lost.”

Never mind that the student section was still the loudest and wasn’t the only one with empty seats.

Now, the students are back, and despite all the roadblocks in place to keep them from getting tickets, they’re starting to go to games. But that’s not good enough for the blue-hairs.

Now, you’re not loud enough. If that’s not the pot calling a pot a pot…

It’s offensive when a bunch of old people are telling students they’re not rowdy enough—especially when the old people don’t stand up and can’t clap loud for fear of busting all their capillaries.

But after thinking about it, only one conclusion can be reached.

The blue-hairs are right. The student section isn’t loud enough.

When Pat Hill tells people what big-time football is like, people in Fresno listen. They listen because that’s what people in Fresno want to be—big-time.

Well, I’ll tell you this much, big-time basketball schools have active student sections, and now that we’ve got the big-time basketball arena, it’s time to turn it out.

Watch a game between ranked opponents from major conferences. You’ll see the away team’s bench drowning in a sea of hopping students, each wearing the official student section T-shirt.

At Cal, there are student section secret police to make sure everyone is standing and screaming. Don’t close your mouth, and don’t even contemplate sitting down or you might get the boot.

If you know about college basketball, you know about the Cameron Crazies in Durham, N.C.

Duke might be able to recruit all the McDonald’s All-American basketball players, and those All-Americans might be able to bully the Bulldogs, but what makes their students any better than Fresno State’s?

The Blue Devils don’t have McDonald’s All-American students, and even if they did, so what? You think they’re better than you?

Anybody can be a rowdy fan.

Everyone in the student section should be standing. Everyone in the student section should be yelling. Everyone in the student section should be a student.

Razz the refs. Paint your face. Cut open a basketball and wear it on your head.

If for nothing at all, then do it so the malcontent Bulldog basketball geysers will stop calling post-game AM radio to talk trash on the students. Defend your student-dom.

Since you’re the scapegoats, you have to make the fans understand the real reason for the loss—the seven-minute scoring drought.

Don’t give the fans any more than that to complain about. Make them turn their attention back to what we should really be talking about—Ray Lopes’s sweater vests.