Editor,
Welcome to the social event of the season: the gathering of goal-oriented goal-getters. Welcome to a Saturday on South Campus: a Lobo football game. I come from the Northeast. It's a place where sports loyalty is fundamentally established. So it came as a shock to me when I found an overall lack of enthusiasm toward the game's outcome. From the fans to the boosters, the support staff to the actual players, there seems to be a deep-seated ambivalence that needs to be corrected in order for this program to succeed.
Statements like this typically raise the usual questions or instinctual defensive reactions. But what we have to realize are the actual facts: Fans do not fill the stadium until late in the first quarter and often leave early in the fourth to beat traffic (if anyone in this city wants to see true traffic, then come with me to a Patriots game in Foxboro, and we'll try getting back home in under two hours - it's not going to happen).
The paid support staff don't care about the game. They care about furthering their degrees, saying they know the players or, in some cases, developing intimate relationships with the players. And all the players care about is who is having the party after the game. In addition, the only reason the paid support staff care for any success is because a loss or failure progressively makes their weeks more difficult. And if their weeks are difficult, it's due to the stress brought by anxiety-ridden coaches who are consistently hounded by self-righteous executives who want more money from the boosters or investors. But with losses and offensive ineptitude, purse strings tighten and the aforementioned cause and effect takes place.
The question now remains: How do you establish a sense of unity when no one is unified? The only visible way to create a sense of unity is through separation. If we separate ourselves from our topical worries; if for one day we can join together and become a part of something bigger, become a part of something that has substantial, tangible meaning, we can, as a whole, become part of the University. And if we can do this, if we can back our team through the hardest of hard or the highest of highs, then we can do anything we set out to achieve. It doesn't matter if it's political, financial, spiritual or emotional.
Whatever the case may be, with a sense of unity that's concrete, we can accomplish anything on the field or off. As with everything in life, we are left with a choice. We can back our players so long as it's en vogue, or we can sit through potentially disastrous games with only a sheer hope of a comeback. We can stand irate when another awfully biased call is forced upon us; we can live and die with every play just to experience the sheer emotion of the play, even if it only lasts for an instant.
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It remains to be said: It's the instants that make life what it is. And how we tie them all together is what makes this life, or this team, special. So when Wyoming plays New Mexico on Saturday in University Stadium, don't come because your friends want you to go. Don't come because there's nothing better to do. Come because you want to witness something beautiful. Even if it's only for an instant.
Nick Christian
UNM student
