wray.vings KYLE WRAY
Remember the guy you used to always see (and hear) at little league baseball games? You know, the guy who sat on the back bleacher and yelled at the umpire until the veins in his neck popped out? The same guy who was so obnoxious he made everyone at the ballpark uneasy whether his kid was playing or not. That guy was the same one administrators threatened to throw out of the gym during high school basketball. He got so angry at an official he stormed onto the court and threatened to do bodily harm. He acted like it was the last 20 seconds of game seven of the NBA finals. Remember that guy? It seems he has been cloned, and he buys a lot of tickets to Big 12 football games. I have seen (and heard) many things at sporting events I thought I would never experience. Recently I’ve seen fans spitting and throwing objects at players and coaches. And these offenders weren’t college students. They were grown-ups… sort of. Some were 82
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male, some were female. It seems lack of tact is no respector of gender. I’ve often wondered how someone would feel if you walked into their office, when they were on the job, and spit on them and emptied the remaining contents of your Coke on their head. You would look like a Neanderthal. I’m not sure what happened to sportsmanship. I’m not sure it’s any worse now than it was 30 years ago. It seems the sport of golf has retained a respectable amount of reasonable behavior. Golfers, locked in battle all day remove their hats, shake hands and set aside their differences. And it’s all out of respect for each other, and the game. But that is the golfers. I’m not sure what is happening “outside the ropes.” Maybe the fans of Tiger Woods are verbally abusive to the fans of Sergio Garcia. Does Natalie Gulbis dump her bottled water on Paula Creamer? Granted, the environments are a little different, but still. Have you ever really watched how some people act at a football game? It’s not normal behavior. Sigmund Freud would have some serious case study material. Rage. Anger. Disparaging – embarrassing. Unless you
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are seated on the first few rows, the players, coaches or officials can’t hear you. In fact, chances are, only the people in front of the offender can hear them. But everyone behind them can watch the entire ugly event unfold. Recently, I was in a football stadium where a man in the front row was screaming such vile, awful things, I had to turn and see if for myself. There he was, in all his glory, a man in his mid-forties. He was decked out in his team colors, standing, foaming at the mouth. Setting next to him hiding her face was his wife and other horrified relatives. Rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t do it or say it in front of your mother, you probably shouldn’t do it or say it in front of 60,000 football fans. It’s nice to hear people from all across the country talk about how great Oklahoma State fans are…and act. They always mention the Orange, and the way they were treated in Stillwater. We like it loud… but respectable. Go Pokes.