Welcome to "Browntown"

In recent years, many columnists have published pieces in our fair paper about the painfully obvious lack of student support for Tufts' athletic teams.

You see, it's frustrating for us to know that we're writing about subjects that apparently nobody cares about, save for the athletes and some of their parents. So we've done our best to solve the problem in two different ways.

The first method has been to berate the student body for being lazy, and chastise the athletic department for not promoting itself. The idea here has been that, if we yell at the students enough, they'll be motivated to get up and actually go to the games.

Has this been effective? Not even a little. You're still lucky to get more than about 20 people at any given baseball game.

Apparently Tufts students don't respond well to being berated. Go figure.

The second way has been to try and convince people of how good our teams actually are. We've told somewhat exaggerated stories of national championships, high flying dunks, athletes drafted by professional teams, and the glorious life of our Div. I sailing team.

These stories have all had varying degrees of truth -- there were some dunks thrown down by the basketball team this season (one of the semi-spectacular nature), there have been some national championship runs, a couple of baseball players have been drafted, and our sailing team is one of the best that exists anywhere -- we've had 18 national championships and 81 All-Americans since 1980. (Is it even a little bit bothersome to anyone else that our sailing team is better than the Naval Academy's? Maybe I'm being silly.)

But these tales of athletic splendor also have done little to boost attendance. It seems that people either aren't buying it, or they are and they still don't really care.

So those strategies didn't work. Fine. They're done, finished, caput. I'm throwing them out. I'm going to think of something else. You need to have reasons to come to games. And you need fun reasons. Interesting reasons. You don't need some loudmouth telling you that you have the school spirit of a baked potato.

Going to games should be fun, even if the action on the field happens to be boring. Why do you think the bleachers at Fenway sell out all the time? It has nothing to do with that chump-filled Committee, you can rest assured. It's the environment in the stands -- the drunken lunatics throwing peanuts and beer bottles at the dude in the Yankees hat.

For this I present exhibit A: the Zeta Psi brothers. Even though they usually don't show up until about halftime of the men's lacrosse games, you can be sure that, when they do, the refs and whoever is unlucky enough to be Tufts' opponent that day will wish they had stayed home. The brothers, all at varying levels of intoxication and clad in "Welcome to Browntown" t-shirts, use their collective creativity to bombard the officials, the opponents, and even the weather with chants and insults for the duration of the game.

A personal favorite from Saturday's game against Colby came when a cold rain began to fall. As the raindrops got heavier and steadier, one clever member of team "Browntown" started to chant "Please stop raining!" (When asked for a reaction, the rain declined comment.) Other favorites include, "Drive home safely," various chants about Jumbo nuts, and a rousing rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

But Zeta Psi isn't alone in its revelry at athletic events. Members of other fraternities and athletic teams have also been known to join in the festivities. At one notable men's basketball game against Amherst this year, several members of the men's swim team brought banners, along with overwhelming amounts of pent up hostility, and let loose on Amherst freshman John Bedford, who was in the middle of a lawsuit against Davidson College for revoking a basketball scholarship.

Of course, these two examples alone aren't going to attract hoards of fans to every single game. There need to be other reasons.

Tufts isn't Div. I, but that can have its benefits. At big schools, athletes are celebrities, and they're kept at a distance from other students. At Tufts, chances are you know at least one person on every single team. Go watch them play sometime.

Or, if you don't know who to vote for in the upcoming presidential election, go watch them play -- Randy Newsom is a starting pitcher on the baseball team, and Joe Mead plays lacrosse.

If these ideas still don't excite you, maybe we could create some other attractions. Perhaps at baseball games, seventh inning stretch chugging contests with coach Casey would produce a crowd. Or, since the only real, school wide attraction that we have is the Naked Quad Run, maybe some streakers in the stands would draw some fans.

I'm a Red Sox fan, and therefore a natural born skeptic. I don't really expect that any of the few people who read this are going to automatically rush out to the next game, and I don't expect a huge jump in attendance. I'm just trying to give some reasons why it could be fun to go watch some games.

Because the fact of the matter is that it's almost embarrassing to be at our games as it is. Parents usually outnumber the students, unless it happens to be a playoff game. Nobody is expecting the same kinds of support that Div. I schools get, but when Middlebury travels six hours to play us here, and they have the same number of fans that we do, something's not right.

So just go have fun. Maybe you don't know anyone one the team, and maybe you've never seen any of its games before in your life. But if you're looking for something to do this Saturday, bring your friends, go sit in "Browntown" and make some noise. Yell at the refs, yell at the players, hell, yell at me if you want to. Just make sure you show up.