Ryan ChartrandWhat if Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis made it mandatory for all Raiders fans in the Black Hole to wear tie-dyed T-shirts and sing “Kumbaya” all game long?
Just imagine if he changed his long-standing Raider motto of Commitment to Excellence to We Love Everyone.
Every fan would yell things like “We don’t care if Randy Moss tries or not, we know he’s special on the inside,” or “It doesn’t matter if we win, just as long as every player on the team gets some playing time.”
These comments are about as likely as Ron Artest going to the next march for peace in downtown Sacramento. Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this one.
What if I said that you weren’t allowed to boo at sporting events? The state of Washington’s Activities Association that regulates high school athletics is actually contemplating making it illegal to boo at sporting events.
At first I thought this was one of the stupidest things I had ever heard. I thought the term ‘politically correct’ was taking on an entirely new meaning. I mean, sports are not fair; people are booed all the time. Some fans even boo their own teams when they don’t perform.
They say Philadelphia fans boo more than they cheer. They once booed Santa Clause at an Eagles game. Booing in Philly is like breathing.
But as I sat and pondered this no-booing thing, I started to realize some positives. I think I’m actually beginning to see the light. Why stop at banning booing, why not winning?
Why not competing all together? Why should we even keep score?
I think we can really build on this one, the possibilities are just endless. I think my ideas may be revolutionary; maybe they’ll change the way we look at sports altogether.
Since it’s just about that time, we’ll start with March Madness. This tournament has 64 teams all trying to play for one championship. That’s just not fair; 64 teams can’t all win.
How about instead of playing out the actual tournament, we give everyone a trophy and they all go back to school winners?
Just think about all the teams that don’t get invited to the big dance and think how left out they feel. I mean, think about 2-28 Iona, which tried so hard this season, but just fell short in 28 of its 30 games.
I mean, a couple breaks here and there, they would be a six-win team. They need something! So I propose the tournament of 336. That way every team in Division I basketball can feel special.
And they should only play basketball games on one hoop, because if we can’t share, then what’s the point?
I started thinking about other sports that just aren’t fair. The first thing that came to mind was golf. Why should Tiger Woods always win? There’s got to be a way to make everything fair and keep everyone happy. Woods can just play every player’s ball. This way they all win, and they don’t ever have to play against him. Everyone will win and form a conga line listening to songs after the tournament. Yay!
Everything can be fair. Everyone can win, and no one ever deserves to be booed. Then I started to think, if everyone is winning, there must be a lot of cheering going on.
Cheering is going to have to be banned too. I mean, if you can’t boo, you can’t cheer.
Wait a second, didn’t somebody try this already? Oh yeah, now I remember, they called it the USSR. How did that turn out anyway?
The state of Washington wants a friendly and welcome environment for the kids. Well, that’s cute and all, but at some point, kids have to learn to deal with adversity. Chances are, they’ll face it at some point.
Now, booing at youth leagues is clearly inappropriate. The most important things are the juice box and orange slices. And I’m certainly not suggesting that booing a toddler each time he falls during tricycle training is a good move either. But, booing is part of life – you don’t always get the gold star.
For those who have played sports competitively, chances are you relished the opportunity to play in front of a hostile crowd. Igniting the crowd is great, but shutting one up is even better.
So today, I boo Washington state, and if they don’t like, it they can just sing:
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya!