ASUN execs push for better fans
Many National Collegiate Athletic Association football teams are reluctant to come to Nevada because of excessive profanity and heckling from fans in Mackay Stadium, said student leaders at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Wolf Pack fans chant at the Utah State football game Oct. 18. Photo by Devin Sizemore
Student body president Eli Reilly said students and other fans are following a few students’ impromptu negative chants because of a lack of what he calls a “script” for games.
“We don’t want to see that,” Reilly said of the negative chants. “It reflects poorly on our school and the students here.”
In an attempt to stop it, Reilly has started what he calls a good fan initiative. Under the initiative, an advisory board will be formed to prepare plans and create a set list of chants.
He cited examples of schools like Penn State University and the University of Missouri that have model behavior because of their set scripts of chants telling fans what to do at key moments of the game.
“A lot of these f-the-other-team chants come up when the game is between plays and people don’t know what else to do,” he said. “Someone starts it and it just catches on.”
Reilly went on to say his goal is to replace the people starting the vulgar chants with members of the Associated Students of the University of Nevada’s Blue Crew starting pro-Wolf Pack chants.
“We want to create a traditional student section that other teams will look at when they come here and say, ‘That’s really cool’,” Reilly said.
Negative fan behavior has turned Mackay Stadium into a hostile environment for fans from other teams and even opposing teams themselves, Hackett said.
“It’s in the whole stadium, especially the north and south end zones,” he said. “It’s sad because it’s a very small portion of the fans, but they are making a large impact,” said Keith Hackett, the associate athletic director at the university.
So far, the Wolf Pack has not had trouble scheduling games with big name opponents. If fan behavior does not improve that may be a concern, he said. The inability to schedule games with out-of-conference opponents like Missouri and Texas Tech would mean less national recognition for a Nevada team that has been improving the past few years, Hackett said.
National recognition increases community support for the team, aids recruitment efforts and offers the Wolf Pack a doorway to larger bowl games at the end of the season.
“I don’t think it’s ever going to have an impact on getting great opponents here once, but when we try to get them to come back is where we might find trouble,” Hackett said.
Hackett and Reilly both mentioned Nevada’s home game against Northwestern University two years ago as an example of the repercussions from the negative behavior exhibited at UNR.
“Fans from Northwestern promptly wrote letters to the [UNR] president about the way they were treated,” Hackett said. “We apologized promptly to the people who wrote the letters. We try to be proactive about apologizing to people who complain, but it shouldn’t be happening.”
Hackett said he supported ASUN’s efforts to improve fan behavior and felt that the plan to create a script of set chants would help solve the problem.
“It’s going to be a long process, but once students begin to see the shift, it will catch on,” Reilly said.
Jay Balagna can be reached at jbalagna@nevadasagebrush.com.
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:47 am
And when we are done wasting money on a few unruly fans that hurt other teams’ feelings, we will finally be able to concentrate on budget cuts, rising tuition costs, lack of 24-hour campus, rapes occurring in our parking garages in the middle of the day, and high dropout rates. Huzzah!..
November 18th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
This would be a great idea if they could actually come up with chants and not steal them from other universities, such as Michigan (Go Big Blue!) and Florida (the gator chomp). If they were able to come up with some of our own, so that people would recognize them as ours, I would be fine however using other schools chants is no good especially when I hear them all I think of is those other historic programs.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Grigory, while budget cuts et al. are extremely important, the image of the university is tarnished and hurts recruitment of students when we are known as a school of drunks. I can’t wait for the game where the entire student section stands the entire time and wears blue and silver proudly cheering for their team, not against the other, and I second Ryan’s comment, though I know little about college football outside of the WAC he has a great point.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I’m not sure being known as a party school hurts recruitment. Though, it might hurt the University’s ability to recruit the kind of students it wants.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Hostile environment? Try showing up in the Mem.Coliseum at the Stanford/Kal game in a ‘Cal Sucks’ shirt.
Beat Cal! (again)
November 20th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Tim, I realize that UNR has problems with its image - not in the least because of its sports fans. However, we are currently in the middle of a crisis which puts the very future of our school in peril. We’ve got no money, the budget cuts are causing the faculty to be fired and entire departments to be shut down. I didn’t vote for Reilly, but he is the ASUN President, and I expect him to devote all of his time to solving this main issue. So far, he hasn’t done anything noteworthy.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Grigory, please, go away.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Why?
November 21st, 2008 at 12:24 am
I know this is a university which is liberal by definition, but let’s leave the liberal politically correct crap out of football. Stick to regulating “hurtful” speech in other areas.
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I agree. Boorish, profanity-lace chants reflects very poorly on the kind of student-fans. Word will spread around and then good luck finding quality, nationally-ranked opponents. Without playing those kinds of teams, good luck with national recognition or increasing our strength of schedule for a bowl game or a championship.