On Valentine's Day, the MSU men's basketball team defeated Minnesota, 69-58, at Breslin Center. Late in the second half, members of the Izzone started chanting "UN-EM-PLOY-MENT" to Golden Gophers head coach Dan Monson, in reference to the team's then 1-10 Big Ten record.
Head coach Tom Izzo later said he hadn't heard the chanting but sharply criticized the fans' comments.
"If I would have heard that, it would have been worth a technical to walk over and smack somebody," he said following the game. "That's uncalled for; that's ridiculous."
The incident brought fan behavior back into the public spotlight and forced university administrators to figure out how to respond to unruly fans. And some universities are taking a hard-line approach.
Maryland is considering implementing a policy to muzzle the crowd on mocking chants and other unreasonable behavior. The move came in response to obscenities chanted against Duke when Maryland hosted them in mid-January, said university associate athletics director Doug Dull. He said a student committee has since been formed to decide what to do about the fan behavior.
MSU already has policies in place, as decided by the Big Ten Conference, said conference spokesman Scott Chipman.
"We decided that the institutions would be held responsible for school-sponsored student sections that attack or single out student athletes," Chipman said.
In August, conference commissioner Jim Delany launched initiatives to set aside tickets to let visiting fans sit behind their team's bench, limiting how replays are shown in the arena and moving the band away from the visiting team's bench.
"The Big Ten Conference is taking a very serious step forward to monitor crowd control and fan behavior in and around our venues," Delany said in an August statement.
"Sporting events should be fun and enthusiastic environments for the participants and those in attendance."
Ross Ramsey, vice president of operations for the MSU Student Alumni Foundation, said he has heard about the potential policy at Maryland.
"We're past that now," Ramsey said. "Obviously, Maryland is more concerned with issues of extremely obscene comments and behaviors which we don't encounter here."
Since the start of the Izzone, students have been required to sign contracts that hold them accountable for their actions, Ramsey said. If a student violates the contract, he or she might be removed from the Izzone.
But some MSU students say attempting to muzzle the student cheering section is tantamount to violating First Amendment rights.
"That would be degrading to freedom of speech, and isn't that one of the things they are teaching us to practice - the freedom of speech?" asked Steven Hodge, a physiology and computer science senior.
Psychology sophomore Ben Bakalyar, a member of the Izzone, said policies such as those at Maryland are positive for the university's image.
"Student sections can sometimes get out of control, and when that happens, it brings down the game," Bakalyar said. "It's a good thing they're putting something in place to keep it under control."
Staff writer Scott Cendrowski contributed to this report.
