To even think that we're fans

By Nick Pinkerton

Tonight is the year's biggest sporting event on our campus. Over four thousand students, alumni and local spectators will pack Leavey Center as Santa Clara looks for redemption against the Zags.

Whether or not the Broncos defeat Gonzaga and end a three-game home losing streak, it's important to keep this in mind.

As students, we are ultimately the ones who decide how we, our surrounding community and the media remember Santa Clara basketball and our other university athletics programs.

This reputation is more than just an allusion to the events that happened last year in Leavey -- when the Broncos pressured Gonzaga for 30-something minutes, only to come up short due in part to inappropriate fan behavior.

In short, for several years here, the students have not fully appreciated the nature of sports on this campus.

As students, we're aware of the presence of student athletes on this campus and the level of commitment to which they make for their particular sport. We have a basic understanding of the university's athletic identity.

However, what we don't understand is that we too have a significant role in the makeup of this identity.

This won't be as prevalent tonight when over a thousand of the Ruff Riders pack the Leavey bleachers. Savor this night when we're actually representing a Division I program.

But here is the reality for the rest of our programs. If one of our teams loses a game, we may talk about it the next day -- maybe even two days later -- and then it's as irrelevant to us as the number of stitches on a baseball.

We'll watch the women's soccer team or men's water polo team in the first home game of the school year, but our appreciation for them will die down until the postseason. And those are perennial top-25 programs.

At the end of all of this, we don't have a genuine concern for our teams and our role as the voice of this campus. Even I consider myself guilty of this.

Because of this lack of identity, we inconsistently fill in the venues. We yell at opposing players and referees with vulgarity and insensitivity. We throw trash onto the court. And then, whatever the outcome, we party.

Sports, for most universities, provide students with another facet of the college experience. Win or lose, we can be a part of this together and give our time in college much more meaning than a transcript and a hodgepodge of drunken adventures.