Bruce Catton called baseball “the greatest conversation piece ever invented.” It’s pretty hard to argue he’s wrong. Walk into the bank, the barbershop or your favorite watering hole and you’ll hear people talking about the local team.
Baseball is the best example, but sports and athletics at large work the same way. We bond with neighbors, cheer with new friends and cry with strangers.
In sports, we have a common purpose. People who can’t agree on religion, politics or music all come together and nobody cares about anything else. If you’re wearing an Olde English D, you’re family.
Sports help us forget our troubles and test our limits. You never know what you’re
going to see, and you’re sharing that experience with 40,000 of your closest friends.
Finding another way to connect with so many people all at once.
Rich people like sports, poor people like sports. Democrats watch baseball, Republicans watch it, too. You don’t have to have a degree to cheer for the local university’s football team and no one would throw you out of Joe Louis Arena for going to a mosque instead of a church.
If you’re a fan, you’re family.
That kind of a bond has a positive impact on a community. It’s a lot easier to get along with people who are outwardly showing you that you have something in common.
While it’s easy to criticize how much universities spend on their athletic departments, we should also remember how valuable those programs can be. It’s not just about revenue, it’s about community.
If you feel like you’re part of the community, you’re going to have a bigger stake in it. A college that cheers together learns together.
If you’re wearing the school colors, you’re family.
If you’re a freshman or a senior, a jock or a band geek, or a theater kid or Mathlete, cheering for the same team brings you together. It makes you feel like you’re a part of something. It’s not often that those groups can come together, but they do. You see it every day.
Some students, faculty and staff here at Eastern Michigan have made noise this year about budget cuts that hit every department except athletics. Everyone complains the football team doesn’t win and we need money to teach, not to lose football games.
But that discussion misses an important point: it’s good for college students to come together on Saturdays for football games and the other six days for many other sports.
The athletic budget is buying you more than helmets and pads, it’s buying you happier, better-connected students.
The problem at Eastern isn’t that we spend too much money on athletics it’s that we haven’t successfully sold EMU sports as part of the student experience. Perhaps it’s because we’re a commuter-heavy school.
That should change. We would be a better university and a more desirable place for prospective students if the gameday atmosphere was better. We need buzz around campus for the upcoming sporting events. We need bigger turnouts.
You should be able to walk into the Student Center and hear people talking about the team. It would make this a better university. We would bond with each other and it would be more fun to go to school here.
If you’re talking about the team, you’re family.
Give it a try. Share the experience and start a conversation.
