Take a lesson from the South: go to a football game, y'all

To my mother's distress, I have not yet set foot in the University Chapel for any religious service. I have, however, been true to my Bible Belt heritage by practicing the South's alternative religion: football.

First, a little history lesson. My father, a college administrator, took our football education seriously. My sisters and I essentially grew up on college campuses. On Saturdays in the fall, the whole family would don the red and black of Rhodes College or the purple and white of Furman University, depending on where my father worked at the time. We'd make our way down to the stadium, where we would cheer on the respective college's nontraditional mascot — the Lynx or the Paladins. There I witnessed packed stadiums of grown men wiping away tears after close losses and genteel Southern ladies turning into raging maniacs when the ref made a bad call.

It's not surprising that I came to Princeton freshman year with high expectations for college football. That's why it came as a great shock when I realized the apathy of the majority of Princeton students toward the sport.

I tailgated at the first game my freshman year. After a hot dog lunch and a couple of beers, I checked my watch. It was 1:30, and the game had started half an hour earlier. When would this group of 30 or so start heading down to the stadium?

As it turned out, only one other tailgater deigned to leave our grilling site around 2 p.m. We headed over to the stadium, where I had the awkward experience of sitting with the entire family of a guy I had just met — it turned out he was the latest in a Princeton dynasty.

There were a couple of guys from the Class of '02 — 1902, that is — screaming at the top of their 120-year-old lungs. Other than the geriatrics and the occasional family group, I saw only a couple pockets of students.

I chalked the lack of enthusiasm up to the team's meager performance. Surely, I thought, when they gave the fans something to cheer about, the crowd would start going wild.

But even now, with a 3-1 start much more promising than last year's, the stadium is still largely empty of students, except for the band. No matter how hard the students are bribed, they just can't seem to make it down to Princeton Stadium. After one game, I wound up with an entire pizza for free because there were not enough students to eat what had been ordered. Compare this with Clemson, where the average attendance is around 75,000 and students flock to Death Valley by the thousands.

And y'all think OUR part of the country is backward?

Last Saturday's game against Colgate was only one example of the lack of team spirit. I'm sure the rain had a lot to do with the attendance, but the fans that did show up were comatose compared to the Colgate half of the stadium. Its section, with half as many people as Princeton's, was making more than twice as much noise. I learned two important lessons that miserable Saturday: First, my "raincoat" was not, in fact, waterproof, and second, there is some football gene in Southern DNA that Princeton fans must lack. Good Southerners would never let the screams of "Go Gate!" from their opponents' fans drown out their own noise.

Late in the game, Princeton put up a goal-line stand that could have effectively ended the game. The crowd was silent. Only after the Tigers stopped Colgate on fourth and goal did the Princeton section make some noise.

I've given up on trying to drag reluctant friends down campus to the games on Saturdays. But that won't stop me from getting out there and cheering for the Orange and Black.