That phrase above is the key part of the Division III sportsmanship statement, but in some places it is ignored by administrators and trampled on by fans. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from my experiences this past weekend.
As you may know, I went to three Division III football games over the weekend. At two of them, the fans did support the participants and officials in a positive manner. (More so the participants.) However, fan behavior at Wilkes was appalling, to an extent on both sides, but especially from the Wilkes fans.
As it stands right now, I would never take my children to a Wilkes game and I would recommend nobody else do so either.
And I’m not even talking about the inebriated mob standing in one end zone at the end of the game. It’s the fans in the other end zone who chose to berate individual players from the opposing team, loudly and with the foulest language I’ve ever heard at a D-III event. (And I’ve been to a lot.) At one point in the game Delaware Valley was punting from its own end zone. While several fans in the corner of the end zone were yelling at the punter, one person stepped up and yelled at the top of his lungs, “You f—ing f-g–t, you’re nothing but a f—ing f-g–t! Pressure’s all on you, you f—ing f-g–t!”
I shot a picture of the fan and it’s in our gallery if anyone wants to follow up.
Security? Nowhere in sight, of course.
I wouldn’t mention it if it were an isolated incident, or if the university had shown any interest in policing its crowd. But this harkens back, unfortunately, to many problems that we have had with MAC fans on the message board in the past, and echoes other problems reported regarding MAC fan behavior. You’d have to have been around the league a fairly long time to remember a brawl between Wilkes and Lycoming fans after a men’s basketball game in the late ’90s, but I remember full well, since it was part of a pattern of fan behavior, and a previous MAC commissioner and a since-departed basketball coach had the gall to blame us for it.
At the time, I pointed out that the MAC had no sportsmanship statement and if it did, it was not on the conference’s Web site.
This is going on eight years later and the MAC still does not. It doesn’t even pay lip service to sportsmanship, and it shows at the games. It is long past time for the MAC to take this seriously.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the NCAA promotes good sportsmanship by student-athletes, coaches and spectators. We request your cooperation by supporting the participants and officials in a positive manner. Profanity, racial, or sexist comments, or other intimidating actions directed at officials, student-athletes, coaches or team representatives will not be tolerated and are grounds for removal from the site of competition. Also, the consumption or possession of alcoholic beverages at the site of competition is prohibited.”
Let’s see, profane, racial, sexist and intimidating. Yeah, that pretty much covers it.
The MAC should take direction from its like-minded neighbor to the north, the Empire 8. That league has been at the forefront of sportsmanship efforts in Division III for years and commissioner Chuck Mitrano has been the driving force. Sportsmanship in Division III was the subject of a lengthy piece in a recent edition of the NCAA News. (NCAA News stories were lost in an NCAA.org redesign, so the link is no longer available.)
“You could educate until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t have a policy under which to monitor and enforce things — to hold people’s feet to the fire — it just isn’t going to be beneficial,” Mitrano says in the NCAA News piece. “To really have an impact, be successful and have longevity, all three things have to work together.”
But that requires work. The MAC needs to roll up its sleeves and get to it, like other conferences have already done.
And this to the fans, though I’m repeating something I wrote in December:
These players do not deserve your abuse. A Division III football player gets no special treatment above and beyond what you get. They’re not on scholarship, don’t get special dining halls or treatment in the classroom (in fact, you can count on some professors being harder on football players than on the rest of the class).
If you need to get all liquored up in order to enjoy a football game, stay home. The football should be reason enough. If you’re of legal age, there’s plenty of time to drink after the game. Otherwise, act like the adults you allegedly are.