The IU men’s last-minute basketball loss to Wisconsin Feb. 15 brought the usual newspaper wave of opinions of what the players did wrong, what the coach did wrong, what has to be corrected if things are going to change.
I can’t be the only one who left Assembly Hall that night appalled by what some fans did wrong. Again. And I’m tired of hearing that nothing can be done.
A trip to The Hall shouldn’t be one a dad and mom, a grandpa and a grandma, feels reluctance to take a child to, even a 14-, 15-, 16-year-old child. What used to be exposure to a celebration of genuine Hoosier spirit, Hoosier love for the game of basketball and for that team out there in white, has degenerated primarily in the student section to conduct that shouldn’t be tolerated. Period. Exclamation point.
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Granted, obscene crowd chants of the kind directed at Wisconsin’s Brad Davison aren’t done only at Assembly Hall. Maybe it just seems that way because Assembly Hall in its own growing-up years was nationally notable for exactly the opposite – as the place where the B.S. crowd chant reacting to an official’s call was silenced by a coach’s glare, where distracting behind-the-basket waves and even crowd screams were verboten when opponents were shooting crucial late-game free throws. That was the Assembly Hall that was tagged “the Carnegie Hall of college basketball,” and was.
Check the won-lost percentage of those fans against today’s. Show me the last game ugly crowd chants won.
I’ve read that administrators today say nothing can be done about those chants; that’s today’s college basketball. It’s way past time something was tried, because (1) it disgraces a proud, well earned reputation and (2) face it, punks, it doesn’t work. Efficacy and the F-word are not related.
I’d love it if the next time that chant begins, everyone in Assembly Hall who resents such identification reacts with a loud, lusty “Boo!” Sustained, loud and long, joined in by everyone wanting disassociation from the chant and strained to the point that the ugly stuff is drowned out. Some of it can even include some personal disapproval of the call or target that prompted it but the effect could be the kind of censorship we’re told just can’t be done in today’s Hall.
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If such lewdness particularly toward an opposing player indeed is more common in college basketball now than I think, I’m all for rulesmakers giving officials the power to call a technical foul on the crowd – and another if needed, until the un-silent minority understand they are the new target of wrath, even more than the Brad Davison of the moment.
Not that I’m a Davison fan. For most of the last decade he has been the Big Ten’s most notorious flopper, to the extent that veteran Big Ten officials should have been on to his fakery long ago and rewarded it with penalties, not advantages. At the same time, he is probably the league’s best at drawing legitimate charging fouls, and at cashing in his real or phonied free throws, especially in the clutch.
A few years ago, Duke came to The Hall with an even more villainous version of Davison, and a national TV audience heard him targeted with the same student chant. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski spent a year on the IU coaching bench as a graduate assistant before beginning his own Hall of Fame career. Postgame, Krzyzewski made a wry press-conference comment: “There was a time that kind of stuff wasn’t allowed here.”
That time is missed. Don’t bother me with “free speech” stuff. What’s allowable in some places is out of bounds in others. Try making that chant in a judge’s courtroom and see how free your speech is.
I’m 85 and I’ve written a lot about college basketball and I don’t think I’ve ever counseled booing – the louder the better. If it can drown out what else I’ve been hearing, that’s what I’m doing.
Bob Hammel covered sports and wrote columns for The Herald-Times for 40 years.