Fans, promotions and gripes

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Chris Jackson

The fans at this school are, for lack of a better word, pathetic. They are the most fairweather bunch of people I have ever encountered.

UA fell behind by 10 points and they bolted faster than Albanian guerrillas running from the Serbian army.

Now, I must commend the fans for showing up and being very loud throughout most of the game. But as soon as Arizona's defense collapsed, so did the support.

And don't anyone tell me that you were leaving early to beat the traffic. Those who stayed for the whole fourth quarter beat the traffic, as you early departure folks had clogged Sixth Street like cholesterol in a fat man's veins.

People around here swarmed for tickets when the team was 5-0 and ranked 10th. How many will show up for the game against Northeast Louisiana?

Those who do are true fans. Those who don't, are, well, the majority of people here.

They change colors faster than the kids at my middle school did when a different team won the Super Bowl.

Fan support at this school is terrible for everything but men's basketball. I was at a baseball game last year with a crowd (not including us media types in the press box) of 44 people.

Even before the UCLA game I was asking people if they were going to go, and they would respond with "only if we beat Washington."

What, you can't root for a team that doesn't win 100 percent of its games?

I sat through New Mexico football games where they were down by 70 points to Air Force in the third quarter long before I was even of college age.

My father taught me that loyalty to anything, even to a sports team, is not something to be doled out on a random basis. I have bled the gold and black of Pittsburgh's three teams since I was a toddler, going from the high of back-to-back Stanley Cups to the low of the Pirates' 1993 fire-sale.

But I am still a fan. Around here, a loss equals a 50 percent drop-off in fan support.

Be a fan. Show up at the next game with half the energy of last Saturday. I don't care if it's Northeast Louisiana. Be there.

The Wildcats need support.

And for once in my life I want to be proven wrong.

Chris Jackson is a junior majoring in journalism who expects plenty of nasty e-mails in response to this column. He can be reached via e-mail at Chris.Jackson@wildcat.arizona.edu.