Those who hate on Tufts sports usually don't know what the heck they are talking about. They say things like "No one cares about our football team," or "I just don't like sports, but did you hear the new Neon Indian album?"
The problem with Tufts sporting events isn't that nobody cares. Our football team just finished an historic 0−8 season, and still there were over 100 people at every home game when it didn't pour during the second half.
It's also not that Tufts kids disproportionately don't like sports. Yankees and Red Sox caps litter our campus. And those folks who aren't sports fans will still go to a game if it becomes an "event" — see Homecoming, for example.
Attendance at games here really isn't so bad, from my experience as a reporter. The issue is the breakdown of the crowd: Parents, other athletes and reporters from the Daily make up over three−fourths of our fans, by my count. The other fourth is people who are good friends with one of the players.
And that's not such a bad thing — the swim team's fan section at volleyball games is electric, for example, and I've still enjoyed nearly every sporting event I've been to here, especially last year's epic basketball win over Bates in the season finale, when screaming fans packed Cousens Gym.
But if we want to make Tufts sports more fun, and more relevant to the student body, everybody needs to be in the stands.
So how do we go about making Tufts games "events?" Giveaways and promotions help, but most college kids need a better motivation than that to wake up at noon on a Saturday and go to a Tufts game. The thing is, there are so many other ways that we can spend that time. We can eat a two−hour brunch at Dewick, or watch Season 2 of "Mad Men" or sit in our rooms masturbating.
A start would be to have fraternities host more pre−game and post−game parties, which is what happened last spring at Zeta Psi before the basketball game on Senior Day.
But I have another plan, and it revolves around this principle: Hate in sports is good.
We need a rival. It's that simple. If we had a school to superficially devote our hate to, fans would flood Cousens Gym and Bello Field.
Tufts kids love competing with each other to see who is more clever — that's why all of these costume parties with punny names happen every weekend. Now imagine all of that ingenuity applied to making fun of the Conn. College Camels. "We will, we will, smoke you!"
Harvard would be a good rival, since Harvard kids are clearly a bunch of smug bozos who take cabs here when they visit. But our rival needs to be a team that we play every year, so they need to be in the NESCAC. Amherst and Williams have each other as partners already, so they're out of the picture. Hamilton, Bowdoin, Colby and Bates are super far away, so let's get rid of them too.
That leaves Wesleyan, Middlebury, Trinity and Conn. College as contenders to be Tufts' new rival. Now it's up to you guys to help me out. Send me an e−mail or tweet me @benkochman with suggestions. I'll also be asking around various Tufts teams this week to get their input.
After my research is complete, I will then devote an edition of this column to mercilessly making fun of our new rival. Let the hate begin!
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