Boiled Sports has some fun with the first game notes publication of the "Crimson Guard." I would jump to the defense of the IU students, but...well, my curmudgeonliness on this issue is pretty well documented. I want students to show up, wear crimson, and make lots of noise, and that’s it. I don’t like the Cameron Crazies and I especially don’t like the half-baked imitations of the Cameron Crazies that now are considered mandatory at all schools.
Amazingly enough, I do have some points of agreement with BS. Including:
- "Purdont" is lame. "Purdouchebags" has a bit more bite.
- It’s silly to have to teach students how to cheer. Again, IU managed to develop a nice homecourt advantage for 40 years without this crap. Still, this is a matter of the pot calling the kettle black. From the Paint Crew website:
-When the Boilers are shooting free throws, make your arm form the "L" shape as if you were about to do the "Boiler Up" motion. When we hit the free throw, yell "whoosh, boiler up" and actually do the "boiler up" motion, then clap four times.
When the Boilers win the tip, it has been a tradition for a few years for one of our members to start a "Lets go Boilers" *clap, *clap, *clap *clap *clap chant. If we lose the tip, just get as loud as possible.
When DJ Byrd does something cool, flap your arms like in Angels in the Outfield, but do not hit those people next to you.
When a player on the opposing team fouls out, be sure to walk them off the court, yelling "left" and "right" for every step made by the left and right feet.
...
-When Mark Wohlford does something, howl like a wolf.
Again, silly, but it’s par for the course for these contrived, named student sections. It's interesting that the "IU sucks" chant, which seems to crop up in Mackey regardless of the opponent, isn't an official Paint Crew cheer.
As for other issued raised by BS and in the comments:
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Purdue’s "national championship": It would have been more precise for the Crimson Guard to say that Purdue has won "no NCAA championships." Purdue does indeed consider itself the 1932 national champions based on a mythical national championship awarded by an organization called the Helms Foundation. "Mythical" championships decided the college football title for decades, and some would say the BCS still is a mythical, rather than true, championship. The problem with Purdue’s claim is that the Helms Foundation didn’t exist until the late 1930s. At that point, with the help of historians, the Helms Foundation awarded "retroactive" national championships for the past. If Purdue wants to claim that as a national title, hey, it’s a free country. Still, it’s indisputably true that Purdue has never won a national championship that it knew it was playing for. There was no Keith Smart-type deciding moment, no trophy, no newspaper headlines from 1932 celebrating Purdue’s win. Just the decision of a bunch of historians years later. However dusty IU’s banners are (and, I might add, two of IU’s title banners are less dusty than Purdue’s 1980 Final Four trophy), every IU championship team came through when it knew the title was on the line.
- The size of IU’s student section: for years, IU has allocated 7800 seats for students. I think many people who aren’t familiar with Assembly Hall think that IU students are limited to the bleachers on the floor. That’s not true. The student section includes the south end bleachers on the floor, about one third of the east main level, and the vast majority of both balconies. IU students have long complained about the lack of a contiguous student section, but IU always has been generous in its allocation of student tickets. For reference, Mackey Arena seats 14,400, which means that IU’s student ticket allotment would take up over half of the entire capacity of Mackey. Unfortunately, the downturn of the program has led to a decline in student ticket demand. Still compared to other schools, IU’s student support remains strong. For the worst team in school history last season, IU sold over 4,000 student tickets. According to this Purdue Exponent article from 2001 (I don’t know if it’s changed since then), Purdue’s student ticket alottment is about 3,000. It’s fun to kick IU’s program while it is down–I know this because I did plenty of kicking of Purdue in the last decade--but IU’s fan support compared to the performance on the court has been very good.
- "Being an original idiot makes you sound like a southern Indiana hillrat. Oh, wait...." I'll give Boiled Sports credit for persistence on this front. Through comments like this over the years, they have tried to cultivate (heh) the impression that the Tippecanoe County Insititute of Bovine Husbandry and Book Lernin' somehow is more urbane than the school that is best known for business and the liberal and fine arts. I don't concede that there's anything wrong with being a "southern Indiana hillrat." It's a much more beautiful part of the state than the space occupied by John Deere U. All that said, IU's student body is comprised of students from all over the state, nation, and world, much like Purdue's. The main difference is that no one at IU gets academic credit for castrating a hog. But yeah, IU's the hick school.