It's Friday night. The stands are filled for the high school game of the season - the rivalry! Everybody's watching in anticipation, hoping that their team will be able to pull out the win. Rivals for years, everyone is anxious to see who will be able to claim bragging rights for the year.
The game starts as a nailbiter. It's very close, nervewracking! Your team is ahead, then they're behind, then they start to pull back towards their goal line. The game begins to get rougher, from both sides of the field. Tackles are harder, players are getting angry and frustrated at each other. Snide comments are said between the teams, but nobody in the stands can hear them.
Suddenly, the game gets much rougher. Your rival team is penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct on the field. The crowd cheers.
THEN...you begin to hear things yelled from the crowd around you. "Shame on you!" "That's terrible!" "You all should know better than to do that!" "You should be ashamed of yourself!" While you can understand the quick happiness because of the penalty in our favor, you begin to question these reactions.
The other team was called for unsportsman like conduct. That means that they were acting and behaving inappropriately on the field, maybe it was physical or maybe it was something the other players said to your players. Then, in reaction to the unsportsmanlike conduct, the crowd around you erupts in negative comments about the other team, and hollers them loud enough the players on the field can easily hear them. This action is at least as unsportsmanlike as the action that occurred on the field that caused the penalty.
What kind of message is this sending to the students? You can't act badly on the field, but you can holler as many profanities and inappropriate, unsportsmanlike comments as you'd like to from the stands? This is NOT the message that should be sent. We, as participants in the crowd, need to check ourselves before we holler out. If we are going to yell something at the other team that is extremely negative against their unsportsmanlike conduct, we are being VERY hypocritical!
