The Campus Sports Guy
Goodbye and goodluck
By Corey Ryan, Sports Editor
February 5, 2007 | 12:55 p.m.
What everyone (at least the other members of the local and campus media) may not realize with the sport-cutting situation that has gone on in the athletic department is the individual impact.
Sure there have been sad quotes used in stories of sport-less athletes and other writers have falsely tried to say they are in similar situations, but none of these reporters appear to have spent any one-on-one time talking to one of the affected. There is a member of the lacrosse team in my Spanish class, and after her season was canceled last Friday, I confronted her.
The situation is this: in order for players to transfer and not lose a year of eligibility, they cannot play this spring. Too many girls wanted to sit the season out, so now they all can't play.
Now I have to plead ignorance because I have never been to a lacrosse game. I have close friends who played lacrosse in high school and one day they tried to show me a highlight tape. It was incredibly boring and I have openly stated a strong distain for the sport. Though I may not seem to care about individuals, I do.
This girl in my Spanish class, who probably won't talk to me now because we were partners for our oral exam (get that Dirk Diggler thought out of your head, this is Spanish class, not a porn) and I completely froze and forgot everything, doesn't want to leave Athens. She came to this school to play lacrosse, apparently we are pretty good, and her sister went here for the same reason. Now, she has to go to a different school and start over with a new team.
Sure, I have wrote and said I think the sport cuts were necessary and they were, but it's hard to side with the athletic department on this one. The thought process is this: football is a money maker and we need to put more of a financial investment into it. It wouldn't be so hard for me if our football players didn't have a notorious reputation.
I'm not angel by any means, but I have never physically assaulted someone, run from the police or driven intoxicated; all crimes football players on full scholarships have committed. I doubt this lacrosse player has either.
She told me how she just recently turned 21 and it was weird for her to go out and celebrate because the lacrosse team follows (well, followed) a strict code of conduct which transcended the athletic departments. She came here to play lacrosse and she wasn't going to let one night out jeopardize that.
I have made mistakes, not comparable to those football players, but have made mistakes and sometimes received second chances. The football players seem to get second and third chances, while lacrosse players, men's swimmers or runners have never needed that second chance. Although no one wants to admit it, most of us students are still kids and immature enough to be worth second chances; it just sucks, for lack of a better word, that the good ones don't get one.
It's probably a good life lesson for the affected athletes.
The world is not fair. The lacrosse team can complain how it would be more logical to cut the women's swimming and diving team instead, which it probably would be to someone who has not looked at the financial numbers, it still wouldn't change the decision. The least the football team can do, after allegedly losing hundreds of thousands of dollars this year due to postseason play and could be read about in The Post from a couple weeks ago (Kirby Hocutt won't talk to anyone on my staff without making them jump through hoops, but somehow a Post reporter got access to the football expense report a week after the sport cuts), is have a great season next year. I don't question why the team spent lots of money traveling during the months of December and January, but I saw all the money wasted after the Illinois game as Peden was decorated with flamboyant picture displays and HD televisions.
I probably will never willingly go to a lacrosse game and I probably will never talk to the lacrosse player in my Spanish class again (it was a really bad oral exam performance on my part), but I will remember how screwed up and unfair the world and this university can be.
Goodbye and good luck to all those athletes affected by the cuts. You will always be Bobcats.