LETTER: CMU Fans’ Anger Shows Lack of Sportsmanship

MSU is coming back to CMU soon, and CMU is determined to avenge their previous loss to the Spartans.

Maroon and Gold, already everywhere, decides to make a more pragmatic integration into students’ lives as the campus prepares for a big day.

Thousands of students stand outside Kelly/Shorts Stadium to grab a ticket to enjoy the showdown, even my roommate got a farmer’s tan for waiting roughly 3 hours.

Great!

Fire Up Chips and hopefully a good game occurs within a reasonably sportsmanlike manner.

However; people on CM Life’s Facebook page and their website are rather teethed that some fellow students are going to wear MSU colors to the game.

Some of the quotes: Blair James: “Anyone that doesn’t root for their OWN school is an idiot.”

Tim Prayther: “If you’re wearing the opposing teams colors to the football game, don’t even bother showing up. Show some class and school pride. Otherwise transfer to state.”

Jake Vallie: “Traitors! How many MSU students do you think will be wearing Maroon and Gold?!Like Tim Prayther said, ‘transfer to state.’”

Gare Sartore: “How about this: If you are using your CMU student ticket/ID to get in and are wearing Sparty gear, then you should be turned back.”

From the website: Gare “I will heckle any green I see in the student section” (This had 13 upvotes and 1 downvote).

So what do I take away from this?

First off, CMU Fans and sports fans exhibit this odd nationalism-like behavior and the “us vs them” mentality, and somehow from it find justification to think it’s somewhat acceptable to degrade fellow students or even deny them equal access to a campus they paid for (which I think would be illegal too).

But let’s talk about this another way: Why is it such a HUGE deal that someone wears an MSU shirt?

Are they not entitled to supporting what team they want?

How does it actually harm you that they’re wearing a shirt?

Why do you think it’s somehow morally permissible to discriminate and marginalize the students who either paid for their ticket or got it as a part of their college package?

I would also like to point out the obvious pot-meet-kettle scenario where Tim, the VP of Spectrum, which represents marginalized people, is doing what he probably hates. I wish I had more space to write about this disgrace.

Stay Classy CMU.

Cody Herrmann

Jackson junior