Fans aren't only ones out of line
By BRIAN KESSLER
Sports Editor
Over the past few days, I have read with interest letters, e-mails and columns that surfaced in regard to Saturday's "bastard children" chant at the Conn-ecticut game.
I'll be the first to admit the chant was wrong from a moral standpoint and my column that appeared in The Observer on Feb. 14 didn't intend to justify it. It simply stated that Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun needs to stop worrying about chants and foul calls and be more concerned with coaching his team. That is what he is paid for. Not to be a Connecticut spokesperson.
One of the columns that caught my eye and the attention of students on campus was David Haugh's commentary that appeared in Tuesday's South Bend Tribune.
Apparently Haugh is so knowledgeable on the topic that he knows when coach Matt Doherty intends to write a letter to the students and what it is going to say. He must have received our faxed copy of it by accident because no letter from Coach D appeared in The Observer on Tuesday as Haugh predicted. And if you read it in today's edition of The Observer, you'll see that he didn't "fire it" over. In fact, it wasn't very fiery at all.
My favorite part of Haugh's column was when he went on to say "imagine how many kids under 10 heard [the chant]. Imagine how many parents had to turn to their kids and explain what that horrible, slang word for illegitimate child meant."
Well Mr. Haugh, now that you just wrote a column that appeared on the cover of the sports section of a "family newspaper" and included the chant verbatim, you exposed it to many more children under 10 than were present at the Joyce Center Saturday. That is the pot calling the kettle black, my friend.
Yeah, and it must have been the "communication arts" majors who started the chants during the game. Communication arts? I think that's something the football players at Ball State major in.
Finally, I think calling the pre-game pep rally a "hate rally" is just a little bit of an overreaction. I'm sure the other harmless signs and comments would never happen at Indiana, Purdue or Duke — esteemed institutions who do no wrong according to Haugh. If he really wanted to get dirt on those schools' fans I'm pretty sure athletic public relations directors and sports information directors aren't the people to call. Ten years from now, I don't think Notre Dame sports information director John Heisler will be very quick to tell reporters how students used to chant "bastard children" at Khalid El-Amin back in 2000. Of course they are going to try to make the program and fans look as clean as possible. And I would never consider a program with Bobby Knight as a head coach to have a respectable moral standard .
As far as the people who claim that people chanted "Does Allah like Bastard children?" that is too long and therefore pretty much impossible to chant.
Another letter I received was from a woman who had given up hope on Notre Dame as a whole based on the 20 people who decided to create an offensive chant. She had never been to Notre Dame but apparently has now decided to find a new team to support because of the students' behavior at the game. Never mind the countless students who dedicate themselves to volunteering for programs like ACE, Holy Cross Associates, Appalachia Seminar or Urban Plunge. They don't count. It must be those 20 students who establish the moral fabric of this campus. Nice try, but I'm not going to be that ignorant. I am a Notre Dame student. Don't judge me based on what 20 people do at a school of 10,000 students. I'm not a statistics major, but I think that is .2 percent of the campus.
It's a shame that people can be so unreasonable.
The views in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Sports Stories for Wednesday, February 16, 2000
