06 March 2011

Vulgar sports chants in the news

From the StarTribune:
University of Minnesota basketball coach Tubby Smith recently sent an e-mail telling the students to stop their profanity-laced chants... [The unimaginative chant from the student section was "F--- Ohio State"].

Michael Josephson, founder and president of the California-based Josephson Institute's Center for Sports Ethics, pointed to current "political dialogue, which is full of vitriolic, angry, idiotic language. People get the idea that's OK, and there's a real danger in that."

Consequences, such as penalties and ejections, are in place to deal with sportsmanship issues among athletes, said Kevin Merkle, associate director for the Minnesota State High School League. "But the fans get to be a tough one," he said. "You get that mob mentality and sometimes it can be difficult to control."
At the high school level, students from a wealthy suburban Minneapolis school were taunting an opposing basketball player from a less upscale area (presumably during a free throw, though the situation wasn't specified) with a chant of "Food stamps! food stamps!"

That class-based cheer reminds me of a collegiate one in the 1960s, chanted by students at an Ivy-league school whenever they were being pummeled by teams from state colleges:  "That's all right.  That's o.k.  You're going to work for us some day!"

Perhaps the most imaginative that I've heard of (and it may be apocryphal) came from a high school in Norfolk, Virginia:  "We don't smoke!  Nor drink!  Norfolk!"

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