The general purpose of a student section, of a home field in general, is to create a loud, unfriendly environment for visiting teams to fear playing in. This is what the student section is trying to accomplish: to be loud, to be into the game and to make opponents fear us. Opposing teams wouldn’t exactly be running away in fear of us if we were chanting “Welcome to State!” or “1, 2, 3, pink bunnies!” Many of our naysayers are longing for the days of “Kill, Bubba, Kill!” back in the 1960s, but I wouldn’t dare say that telling a large man to “Kill!” would be nearly as offensive as celebrating a first down by referring to a female dog.
If our critics were to take a look around the world of sports, they would find that our usage of language is pretty tame. The soccer team Tottenham Hotspur of England, due to the neighborhood of London they are located in being primarily Jewish, often hear the “hiss” sound chanted at them when they play in opposing stadiums in reference to gas showers at Nazi concentration camps. Indeed, inside of our own NCAA, Maryland Terrapins fans and North Carolina Tarheel fans verbally abused former Duke basketball star J.J. Redick when he was in college, telling him that they would like to engage in sexual relations with his sister (not nearly that nicely, however) and, upon discovery of his cell phone number, flooding his phone with hate calls on a daily basis. Once again, “1, 2, 3 first down b——!” is not nearly on this level.
