Lol I thought it was hilarious. I do not understand why people get so upset about stuff like this.
Over the years, our Crazies have chanted a few things which offended non-students, including some obscenities. However, I don't think we've crossed the line that the So Miss pep band did during its NCAA game against Kansas State.
Yahoo's Les Carpenter takes it from there.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketb...ss_band_032812
To its credit, the So Miss administration jumped right on this.
Lol I thought it was hilarious. I do not understand why people get so upset about stuff like this.
I hope the people at Southern Mississippi understand that this incident puts the whole university in a bad light. I must admit, almost 25 years after the fact, whenever I see an Arizona State basketball game or just a reference to that program, my mind jumps to the disgraceful actions of a few of their fans toward Steve Kerr. (Obviously the Maryland people either don't understand this or don't care.)
I hadn't heard (or somehow forgotten) the Kerr Story. That is truly disgraceful.
Here's an article about Kerr last year:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colum...urnament_N.htm
this line is pretty good:
Who knows how the minds of fools work?
Steve Kerr...always pure class, at Arizona, Chicago, and San Antonio. CBS, et al, is lucky to have him. What an amazing journey. I never fully realized what he went through during that time. He is such a knowledgeable, understated, smart announcer. I am now, more than ever, a Steve Kerr fan. Thanks for posting, gus.
You're really comparing this to fans taunting a kid about his dad being assassinated? That's ridiculous. Did these Southern Miss kids cross the line? Yep. Did they deserve to lose their scholarships? NFW! In fact, I'm not even sure they should have been disciplined at all. Our society is too f'ing sensitive about - well - being sensitive.
Hey, somebody sit with them and go "I know you think this is funny, but you're crossing the line into racism here."
Look, it's borderline racist, but that's not how the kids were thinking. Chanting "please don't eat me" at Reggie Johnson (pre - 2011) is just as hurtful (probably more so because that is a personal attack on the kid). If it doesn't deserve any disciplinary action (and it doesn't) then neither did this "twitter-escalated" transgression.
?
Now we're talking.Chanting "please don't eat me" at Reggie Johnson (pre - 2011) is just as hurtful (probably more so because that is a personal attack on the kid). If it doesn't deserve any disciplinary action (and it doesn't) then neither did this "twitter-escalated" transgression.
Demented and sad, but social, right?
Except nobody will care about this after another week or 2. It's not nearly as egregious. You remember ASU because it was completely out of line. This wasn't. In fact, nobody except Duke fans remember the F U JJ chants from Maryland. Students do dumb things at times.
Did you know that the first Maryland game in Cameron in 1987, there were students that chanted "Just Say No" at player intros? How crass is that? Extremely. It was embarrassing at the time, but it's over and done. And nobody will think any less of Southern Miss because 5 band members made a joke about illegal immigration to a hispanic kid.
It's not borderline racist. It's flat-out racist. Most of the Southwest became part of the U.S in 1848 after th Mexican War. All of the peoople who lived in Texas, New Mexico, Arizon and most of California became US citizens--and most of them were of Mexican heritage. Chanting about their unrequired green cards is simply racist. So Miss was quite right to hold the band members to an educated standard rather than allowing their apparent ignorance to smear the university.
And just because the chant was puerile does not excuse it. If it was funny to some, that sense of humor exposes them as ignorant and racist. Thee is no reason to make fun of an American citizen because of his heritage. Indeed, most of the Southwestern Hispanics have a better claim to being Americans, since their ancestoprs were here first, than those who immigrated to New England or the South.
And that's the problem, Jim. It's not flat out racist. Regardless of all the facts and information in your email, Mississippi - and Alabama - and Arizona - and 30-something other states, including ours unfortunately - are targeting illegal immigrants. These kids are from Mississippi - they see a hispanic kid playing. They think it's funny.
Also, don't mix up "ignorant" and "racist." You can be ignorant without being racist. The kids were ignorant. They didn't think about the insensitivity of saying that, and that requires counseling. But it's not deserving of booted out of the program. That's my point about being too sensitive about sensitivity.
Their scholarships were for like $400, so it's not really that much of a punishment. The university chose to make a statement that it will not ratify that sort of behavior by continuing to provide the scholarships (thereby implicitly endorsing their behavior). For an institution that wants to promote diversity and inclusiveness, that's a completely reasonable reaction on their part to a very public event that reflects negatively upon their brand. I mean, they have Latino students and want to continue attracting Latino students in the future, so it's kind of a no-brainer here to distance itself from that type of behavior and signal to its students that it will not be tolerated going forward.
The first article I read on this (link long forgotten) had a response from the player. Rodriguez pointed out the ignorance of their chant as his family is from Puerto Rico - a US Territory.