COLUMN: Firmly on the side of the cheering section
“Utah State, hey, Aggies all the way! Go Aggies, go Aggies, hey hey hey!”
Those are the words Aggie fans love to scream at the top of their lungs at every home game. There is no way students at USU or any other university can experience the full excitement that comes from being a college student without attending the sporting events and cheering for their team.
For us here at USU, we are proud to cheer on any of our Aggie teams, but one stands apart. The one that gives us purpose, though we are not the athletes playing, is Aggie basketball.
It gets inside us, and it becomes who we are.
It is so much who we are even though we aren’t running up and down the court, passing, dribbling and putting up shots, and despite the fact we aren’t in our opponent’s face.
We sweat when they sweat. We, too, need swigs of Gatorade and sorely need to sit down during timeouts to rest our weary bodies. We are USU Aggies!
To tell you the truth, I seriously was embarrassed for the people who have complained about the USU fans these last couple weeks. As I was reading the letters printed in the paper, I pinched myself a couple times, praying it was all just a huge bad dream.
I can’t believe they said they were embarrassed to be Aggies because of the conduct of the basketball fans. All I could think was, “This goes to show just how narrow-minded these people are.”
If you don’t like the way Aggie fans act, don’t come to the games. The student section of the games is always packed. If you don’t like it, do all of us a favor and don’t come. Stay at home, talk to your mother on the phone and free up some seats for those Aggie fans who aren’t embarrassed to be there.
I can tell you from personal experience, the players love it. Teams love playing at home because they know their fans will be at the game.
Before I transferred here to USU, I played two years of football at the University of South Dakota, and you think Aggie fans are bad? Give me a freaking break. The fans there were so much more vulgar than we are. We don’t even chant swear words, which are usually not only accepted but expected at most universities. Oh, and by the way, I guarantee the talking going on in the stands is 10 times better than the chatter going on between players.
Look, until we have every basketball player on our team come up and say they don’t like the things we are saying or cheering, none of us plan to stop. Before you come out and say just how bad we are as fans for the things we say and do, make sure you do some research to find out if we really are bad compared to other schools, because we’re not, and it only enforces you looking like a fool. Aggie fans are great! We love our teams and will cheer for them however we see fit.
Oh, and about the sign a couple of games ago, yeah, it was funny, so deal with it!
Scott Anderson is a junior in aviation technology. Comments can be sent to seanderson@cc.usu.edu.