Kvelve's Comments: A fan of sportsmanship

If a meathead is someone who is dead from the neck up, is a bonehead someone who is so thick in the skull there is little room for brain matter?

Either word would aptly describe the act of trying to stoke an already heated football rivalry with more than 100,000 fans ON HAND. 

Such was the act of stupidity at the conclusion of the Michigan at Ohio State football game, won by an unusually average Michigan football team over the highly ranked Buckeyes. 

Now, there’s probably not a lot of Menza club members at a school who named themselves after a nut, but there were 100,000-plus fans, most of them OSU backers who as always paced the stands.  Michigan won the game 13-10 and launched an on-field celebration. 

During that whooping and hollering one or more of the Wolverine players decided it would be a grand idea to take their school flag and plant it firmly in the center of the Ohio State logo at midfield. 

The guy wielding the flag did his best to plant it in the turf, which was pretty much impenetrable artificial turf. Clearly, this assault on artificial turf was an act of artificial intelligence. 

Nearby Buckeye players did not take kindly to this rub of salt in their wounds act and a brawl of Big 10 magnitude broke out.  Punches were thrown by members of a football conference, now including Washington and Oregon, that has for more than a decade had more than 10 members. 

The conference now has 18 member schools. I’m no math wizard, just ask the ladies at the Valley Press office who routinely find math mistakes in my mileage report, but shouldn’t this conference be the Big 18? 

But I digress. 

Imagine what might happen if, at the end of the Brawl of the Wild, a member of a visiting winning team tried to plant a flag at midfield of the losing home team? 

Beers would flow. Folks in the stands would likely hardly notice it, having already pushed and shoved their way back to the tailgate parties and local bars of the host town. 

This phenomenon of stupidity is nothing new. The most famous such incident was committed in 2000 by “all-pro” wide receiver and noted loudmouth San Francisco wide receiver Terrell Owens who ran to midfield in Dallas to celebrate a touchdown he scored. The ball was knocked from his hands by Cowboy Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith who did not like the disrespect Owens was showing. 

Pro football is played by testosterone soaked, large, strong men with incredible athletic abilities. Most college players are Defacto pros now that many are being paid in addition to college scholarships (don’t get me stahted about that one). Owens took ignorance and arrogance a step further when he ran to the Star logo again in the fourth quarter to celebrate, this time being slammed to the ground by Cowboy safety George Teague. 

Gentlemen, to your corners.  

What Owens and others who take celebration to a new level do not realize is the youth out there are watching, and many of them are mimicking. 

This past week I was at a local basketball game and saw a member of the visiting team, who was a good player, trash-talking players on the home team and making gestures toward the fans in the stands. 

I remember when I was a young Dad with a very young son, and I was building a deck around a home I bought at Liberty Lake outside Spokane. I was on my haunches checking out the straightness of a railing I built and noticed it was a bit crooked in the middle. 

As I was on my haunches, I heard a little voice say the four-letter word that begins with “s” and ends with “t”.  It came from the mouth of my son, who was on his haunches and scratching his chin like I was. 

Kids, as I had always been told, are like tape recorders. 

I stopped, suppressed a laugh, and told him Dad shouldn’t say that word and neither should you. I apologized for saying it. 

The kid who was taunting the crowd in the game the other night was merely mimicking what he has “learned.” 

Sportsmanship has always been cool to me. Sure, I’ve gotten upset in the heat of battle, but I reigned it in. 

To me, this crap cheapens the game. Sadly, I think I’m in the minority on this one.