Thursday, January 12, 2012

IT’S EMBARRASSING! (A WCHL Commentary)



Boorish.  The word has several synonyms: rude, ill-mannered, impolite, coarse, rough, loutish, uncouth, crude, ignorant, base, and a few others that must be in the dictionary.  Why is it lately that we seem to have a spike in boorish behavior at sporting events?  Maybe I’ve been asleep during some Tar Heel events, but I just don’t remember hearing fans engaging in boorish behavior as we heard at the last two Tar Heel games.  Booing our Chancellor and our Governor when being introduced is just flat boorish, and all of those other words I mentioned above.  Nothing wrong with having issues with someone or even having a strong dislike for them, but it seems to me that we as fans attending a sporting event should be able to display the kind of decorum that is associated with class.  Sure, the booers were a small minority, but I wonder what those potential recruits thought when they heard the booing last Saturday.  And I wonder what young people in the Dean Dome learned as they heard some of their elders being childish.  Here we are in each case honoring folks who really deserve it and yet the proponents of rudeness mar it.  There’s a school up the road that has a bad rep because of the boorish behavior of their students during basketball games.  Do we want to be known as the place where adults just aren’t? 
PS:  For those who will want to remind me that people have the right to engage in boorish behavior and many other things, I know that.  I also know that everything we have a right to do isn’t necessarily right to do.