Students’ role: Holler and get behind their team

The good sportsmanship code is required reading before every basketball game, but most fans aren’t trying to hear it. “Students are stupid” at games because that is their role, to whoop and holler and get behind their team while distracting the visiting team, especially on free throws. Last Wednesday the Smyrna students behind the basket were cracking themselves up and having fun - they even moved like it was a fire drill - and it worked, except their team couldn’t shoot free throws either. Adults in big coats sitting in the Spike Lee courtside seats who stand up after a bad call more than once should be sentenced to community service and forced to officiate games in the Y league.

Blue Hen women - The University of Delaware dropped the men’s cross country and track programs effective 2011-12 and blamed it on gender equalization and leveling up to offer the same number of women’s sports as men’s sports. I received this press release from Delaware, which I wrote into my assignment calendar I don’t actually have:

“The Blue Hens [women’s lacrosse] will begin the 2011 season in a new home, Delaware Stadium, Feb. 16, when they take on defending national champion and top-ranked University of Maryland. The first draw is slated for 4 p.m.” And so I checked the roster and it smacked me in the face like a 1955 full-habit-wearing Immaculate Heart nun: Delaware has no Delaware players on the roster. So I say, “pull all state funding for the athletic programs until all teams have some representation from Delaware residents. You can’t find a single Delaware high school lacrosse athlete who can break onto the roster? So, what is the point, then - drop men’s cross country and track so a women’s lacrosse program with athletes from Baltimore and Pennsylvania can have equal opportunity?

R is for “rejected” - I was wearing a size 8 helmet handed to me by the Temple equipment manager back in 1965 just after he fitted Dave Kraftchek with a special-order size 9 1/4. There was a big “R” stamped in red on the top of mine. I asked if it stood for “Riddell” or “reconditioned” but was told no. “It stands for ‘rejected’ but it’s the only size 8 available,” said the equipment guy. “Big Fred with the rejected head,” the Brooklyn boys on the team sang every day until my new lid arrived. Riddell brags on its website that its helmets are the first with “web suspension, air cushion interior and self-contained inflation head gear to name a few; it’s really hard to picture the sports equipment scene without Riddell.” I always wondered what would happen if a trainer overinflated a helmet with my head inside it.

Locally the Pop Warner program must send all helmets off for reconditioning and certification at the cost of $30. So a sort of adopt-a-helmet program is under way and the $30 is tax deductible.

A special section of next year’s program will be dedicated to promoting and thanking individuals and businesses who support this very important cause. Check out leaguelineup.com/capevikingspw for more information. I’m in for one size 8!

Iron City head - I love Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and absolutely can’t stand quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Pigskin pundits talk about “everything Ben went through this year.”

Well, what about the two young college-age women he allegedly sexually assaulted? The New York Daily News reported that only days before the Super Bowl Roethlisberger and two linemen ran up an $800 bar tab in Dallas and left at 1:15 a.m.

That is typical behavior for a guy trying to rehabilitate his image? Coach Tomlin should have demoted Ben’s fat and bleary self-important self to third quarterback for the game. Ben, in a typical riff of self-importance, said after the game that he felt he let the city down and I’m like, “Man, even Michael Vick thinks you have no credibility.”

Snippets - The Cape boys’ basketball team, winner of five of its last six, hosts Polytech, 13-2, at 7:15 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 8, in a major battle at the Cape Corral. It is time for the big barn to rock.

The piecing together of the Cape talent puzzle is now snapped into place; the chemistry experiment is over. Cape can play ball with anyone in Delaware, and the showdown is about to go down and fans are a big part of that. It is time to pull out the bleachers behind the basket.

Is anyone feeling me on this?