|
Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Stan Sheriff crowd
defuses F-bombHERE is why I love the Stan Sheriff Center. It was a raucous night and the emotions were flying high. The breaks were going against the boys. You could feel the fans holding on to Hawaii's momentum with white-knuckle desperation, and still, you could feel it slipping away.
And the fans did everything they could do to hold on.
It was in this atmosphere that one man, seated somewhere near the front, had had all he could take.
And his emotions got the best of him (understandable; it was BYU night).
And he said "the F-word."
He said it loudly. He said it clearly. He said it at exactly the wrong moment. It seemed to pop right out of the air. It was like the sound of plates crashing in a crowded restaurant. It was like the sound of breaking glass.
Everybody in the arena heard it.
And then a funny thing happened. Everybody said, "Oohhhhhhh." There were a thousand "Oohhhhhh"s, and the whole place hushed up, shocked. It was like a needle ripped across a record, followed by awkward silence. It was as if the music had suddenly stopped.
You could actually feel the poor guy's embarrassment.
It was kind of a sweet moment, really.
This is what I love about the Stan Sheriff Center.
No, not that the guy was all shame and felt bad.
Well ... yeah, I guess so, because of that. But more than that, too. Not so much that he felt bad, but why. Because he had a conscience. Because this kind of thing was out of place, and everyone knew it, and reacted accordingly.
Because everyone was shocked by it.
And then (don't worry, there was no shunning), after a moment of silence, all was quickly forgiven and everyone went back to doing what they were there for -- enjoying the action and cheering for their own team with great enthusiasm.
Yes, it's quaint.
And some will say this is old-fashioned, in this day and age. That you should be booing everyone, and that sitting behind an opponent's bench and challenging those players to fights is what college sports are all about, and that you're not a real fan unless you've taken some pepper spray in the face.
I expect to hear this sentiment. I've seen it, at UH football games in recent years. There, an outburst of profanity isn't an isolated incident, but accepted, and expected, and some would even say encouraged. And an unfortunate number of people are there not to enjoy a game, but to work out their anger management issues/mental problems.
It is, as someone put it to me, "a pro wrestling atmosphere."
And it may be one reason why UH football attendance has stagnated, in the mid- to high-30,000s, despite wide-open offense and winning teams.
My guess is, many potential ticket buyers don't want to spend four hours with angry, drunken, R-rated idiots.
But then a sweet moment reminds me that it doesn't have to be that way. And it isn't, at the SSC, where a split-second of ugliness is still washed away by an ocean of "Oohhhhhh"s.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com
