School spirit goes hiss?

Last week we covered international crises, political scandals, a bank robbery and the ongoing reorganization of the top posts in the IU administration -- but, when the letters roll into the IDS office, what's the No. 1 subject of all that spilled ink? \nThat's right: our Jan. 23 piece about students booing Sean Kline at the game against Purdue.\nSigh.\nWell, we're always concerned with issues of vital importance to the student body, so here at the editorial board HQ and halfway-house for chronic armchair basketball experts, we've been talking it over.\nThe Beach Boys said "Be true to your school" -- and we are. We have plenty of cream and crimson accoutrements. We cheer, we watch, we worry about our ranking. And the IDS' biggest fanatics, the sports desk, chase after the team, interviewing players and photographing plays; prognosticating at the season's start, performing the autopsy after its end.\nBut you know, basketball is, at its core, simply entertainment. Sure, you've heard those coach speeches about how it provides life lessons, etc. We're sure it does for a handful of players. But for us thousands in the crowd, or facing ESPN with our bags of barbecue pork rinds and lite (it was on sale) beer -- it's a show. It's drama. It's theater without a script. And, as such, it ultimately exists for no other reason than to please us, the audience. And if we're not pleased, then we'll make ourselves heard until we are.\nWith all the attention intercollegiate athletics garners, sometimes it's easy to forget where it stands in the larger scheme of the university community. When Nike is churning out officially licensed gear, coaches are being interviewed on network TV and multi-millionaire alumni are being feted at games in the hopes that they'll toss a dime or two into the kitty -- after a while, the tail starts to wag the dog. Heck, what better demonstration do you need than the resolution of the controversy over the Athletics Department's $6 million deficit? Students, IUSA, the chancellor, all were overruled in the course of the process -- the tail shook the dog like a pair of dollar-store maracas.\nRecently, in the course of complaining about press coverage of his OWI, Garret Bushong, third string tight-end footballer for that academic mudhole in West Lafayette wrote: "... I thought you would have a little more respect for your fellow classmates and the people who bring millions of dollars into this university year after year ... We all know what we do for this school and what we give back. We run this place ..." (Purdue Exponent, Jan. 23). How dare some lowly students criticize the demigods among us, then?\nBut that's the funny thing -- university athletics are run by universities, which are mostly funded by tuition, which, in turn, comes from our (or our parents') nasal cavities.\nSo, we'll boo if we want, we'll cheer if we want. We'd rather cheer than boo, but, then, we're Hoosiers. We have very high standards (for basketball, anyway).