Collegehoopsnet - UCLA Basketball Fans

Let’s face it. If you live anywhere between Santa Barbara and Orange County the rest of the country has already tried you of this most heinous of crimes. We have been weighed. We have been measured. And we have, most definitely, been found wanting.

To put it simply: the sincerity of our athletic loyalty is belittled because of our geographic locality. Even the ACLU has to shake their collective heads at the sheer quantity of stereotypes that go along with the simple label of ‘L.A. Fan.’ One automatically thinks of a guy dressed in black, a blonde-haired blue-eyed partially synthetic automaton for a wife at his side, a goose pate and foi grois pizza gripped in one hand, the other clutching the remnants of a wheatgrass elixir (enriched with bee pollen, of course). They arrive at the games just before halftime just so everyone in the stands can witness them saunter in with cellular phone in hand, only to leave in the middle of the second half to drop by the Derby then attend a little ‘get-together’ sometime around 4am. They never watch the game and would rather get caught eating a cheeseburger than be seen cheering for something as inane as a sporting event.

I know it’s ugly. I know that the truth hurts. But this is the reputation of the L.A. fan. This is the image that sports fans across the country envision when they think of people that frequent Dodger Stadium, the Staples Center, the dreaded Coliseum, the junkyard that we refer to as the LA Sports Arena, and - you know what’s coming - the ever-scenic Rose Bowl and the hallowed halls of our beloved Pauley Pavilion.

We all know that the stigma is there. And yet, after more than ten years of being an L.A. Fan, I have just one question for my Socal brethren:

Can we blame them?

Now, before I continue, this isn’t to say that there are no diehard sports fans in the entirety of southern California. Actually, I posit quite the opposite. However, there are enough leather-pants-wearing, cell-phone-holding, kelpgrass-eating wannabe sports fans out there to perpetuate the myth.

We’ve all seen them. At Dodger Games they sit along the first-base line talking on the phone as the camera repeatedly pans across their seats. At Laker Games they stroll through the VIP entrance and make their way to courtside seats, gleaming heads nodding at familiar people within the crowd whose names they’ve all but forgotten. At Clipper games….wait a second, nobody goes to Clipper games.

And yes, as much as I hate to say it, Pauley Pavilion is not immune to the invasion of this, the vilest of counterfeit sports aficionado. I’ve even seen our own athletes wander the floor during games, reclining in their leather benches to the left of the band as if they were enjoying a movie at the local theatre. God help them if they cheer at all for their fellow athletes. If they can’t support UCLA athletics then who can?

But, now wait a second, that wouldn’t look cool, would it?

And this brings me to the all-encompassing litmus test of a true sports fan. This one rule stands like a pillar of granite within the galaxy, a time-tested law of nature that is as integral to the order of the universe as gravity itself. Thus follows the Law of Sports Fandom:

If you care more about what other people are thinking about you during a game than the sporting contest itself, you are not a true sports fan.

That’s right. If you don’t want to paint a picture of Joe Bruin on your chest using your nipples for his eyes because you don’t want to make an idiot out of yourself, you are not a true sports fan. If you don’t want to wear powder blue to sports venues because it doesn’t match your new Nine West pumps, you are not a true sports fan. And if, god save you if this is true, you leave halfway through the sports quarter because you don’t want to get stuck in traffic even when the game is still on the line, you are absolutely positively not a true sports fan.

If you cannot honestly pass this one true law I say one thing and one thing only: send in your UCLA season tickets now. We don’t need you. You people are parasites hidden within the empty husks of people that at one time used to care for something beyond yourselves. I encourage the rest of the crowd to heckle you at will. You walk amongst the seats and sap the life from people who would otherwise support our beloved university, all the while garnering TV attention and casting aspersions on the majority of truly dedicated fans that inhabit our arenas and stadiums.

Just once I’d like to see the Rose Bowl filled with powder blue shirts (yes, even if it’s out of season). Just once I’d like to see the crowd at Pauley Pavilion leaping up and down like the Cameron Crazies, the wooden floor beneath the player’s feet quaking like an angry ocean of blue and gold (note to the UCLA sports administration: it doesn’t help when students are pushed to the side of the court and spend the majority of games off camera).

To some degree I can understand the prevalence of ‘L.A. Fans’ at professional sporting events. The glitz and glamour of the venue is too much for some people to handle and image obviously trumps team support when this occurs. But there is absolutely no excuse for allowing these vermin to infiltrate Pauley Pavilion and the Rose Bowl where the majority of attendees are students with no image and no money to speak of.

I thus beseech the UCLA community to turn back the tide of the ‘L.A. Fan.’ We are better than this. I truly believe that.

And let it start this Saturday at the Rose Bowl against Colorado State. Let the entire stadium shine blue with the pride that we should be striving to exhibit every chance that we get. If we start now it will only carry over into the basketball season (which is the true nature of this forum, I admit).

Bruins must unite to combat this foe and thus turn Los Angeles into the respected sports venue that it deserves to be. If we don’t do this then who will?

Trojans?

I think not.


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